ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

are set forth in the parable of the prodigal,—itself a comprehensive and lovely theology. The facts of our consciousness are here drawn out in the clearest array. Every step of our progress from the city of Destruction to the city of God is here mapped out before us. Here is our fall and desolation. Here is repentance, conversion, and reconciliation, when we come home again, and the father embraces and kisses his child, and puts the best robe upon him,

even as the great Father gives to his renewed and reconciled children the clothing of new and heavenly moralities.

There are seasons when the themes of immortality come home to our bosoms in such shapes that they will not away at our bidding. When the chair is vacant, and the chamber is still, and affection is weeping at the bier, we dread the mockery of delusions. We want realities.

It will be obvious, on a moment's thought, how closely this subject connects itself with human nature and human redemption, and that to reveal man here is to reveal his state hereafter. When we form to ourselves artificial theories spun from the metaphysics of the Church, we do not lay hold of the life to come, nor see the sublime pneumatology which the Bible unfolds. To open man's book of life, is to break the seals from the word. If heaven and hell are not arbitrary appointments, but man uncovered, and his powers led out and dramatized on an ampler field, then our souls are openings into another world, and from this outlook we see adown

the long avenues, and their solemn forms come before us as in a mystic glass. Let this subject come up in its order, after human nature with its deep-working laws has been revealed to us, and a 66 theory of the future life" based on indubitable fact would be developed; the letter of Scripture would shine white as the light, bursting with the revealing mysteries of an hereafter. False and artificial theories of man connect themselves indissolubly with false and artificial theories of a future life, for the future life is in fact our present life concealed and folded up. The land of immortality becomes baseless and spectral. The beings with which the technical theologies have peopled it, are any thing but men and women. No wonder the question is anxiously raised, "Shall we know our friends hereaf ter?" Who could recognize among those winged and shadowy beings "the old, familiar faces"?

We are burdened with a sense of the importance of the theme we are handling, so deep, that we fail to transfer it to our pages. We believe that all our costly apparatus of interpretation does little more as yet than touch the letter of the Divine volume, but that its spirit is yet to break upon us as never before, and that the day which Robinson foresaw is yet to dawn. For thickly as the theologians have woven their web around this book, like the silkworm spinning her threads, "till she clouds herself all o'er," yet even now, when touched with reverent hand, there come sparkles from its muffled truths, as from jars surcharged with electric fire. The

wants of these times urge us to seek with fresh diligence, and with new preparation of heart, the responses of the sacred oracles. Let us leave the sects in the oblivious past. At least let us get out of these prisons, into which light comes in scant allowance, and only through stained glass. With all our varied culture, our systems of education and our popular literature, still comes the question from earnest and famished natures, Who will show us any good? They go to this and that gathering for social stimulus; to "popular preachers," who out of their own eloquence and ingenuity attempt to supply food for the soul, and still the soul hungers and thirsts. Commentators attempt to open the Divine Word, but it will not open at their bidding. They smite the rock, but still the soul hungers and thirsts. Each sect sets forth its manuals of doctrine, and makes out its case, but still there is a waiting and a pause. We have religious excitements, and machinery to keep them up. Those that work the machinery get out of breath, and then it stops, and there is a waiting and a pause. Some go back to Rome for rest and shelter, "like a child seeking nourishment and repose on the cold bosom of its dead mother." All the while, the book out of which light is to come lies upon our shelves, - ready to yield its revelations, not to some costly apparatus of interpreters, but to the humble and seeking mind; ready to give light when restored to its ancient authority in the Church, and the usurping creeds of the logomachists are taken away. Let the inquirer forsake these,

and steal an hour every day from the literature that surfeits, but does not satisfy and save. And when the great problems of life and destiny come up each in its turn, and press painfully upon him, let him not give over till the truth stands clear to the intellect, and through that pours a mellow sunshine into his soul. Then the truth lost shall emerge anew and become intuition again. Then the inner folds of the heart shall be laid open, ere come the solemn disclosures of the judgment time.

CHAPTER VII.

CONFLICT AND VICTORY.

"The language of the Bible harmonizes with all human experience, in declaring that all progress implies effort, resistance, combat; - but there are intervals of peace, -intervals when the battle of that day is won and the wearied soldier rests and rejoices; intervals when the climbing pilgrim has reached a mountain-top, and while he breathes the sweet freshness of the air, he looks back upon his nights of darkness and his days of toil, and around upon a world now glowing with beauty because the love that fills it is for that hour unveiled, and upward to a sky from which the clouds have melted or else give back the sunshine in golden light, and forward to the distant and loftier summits where peace has a more abiding home." — PARSONS'S ESSAYS.

We have described the antagonistic forces which struggle for the possession of human nature. There is hereditary evil, with its passions and its brood of lies. There is the effluent Spirit of God always immanent in human nature, always claiming it as his own province of light and love. There is the uprising world of darkness, with all its tempting fiends; there are the bending heavens, with their guardian angels; and the field of conflict is the soul of man. The alternations of defeat and victory, until the final catastrophe takes place, constitute the solemn drama of humanity. Mankind in all ages have been conscious of this conflict, and the highest achievement which any nation's literature hath ever

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »