CHAPTER XII.

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT.

"Survey the bright dominions

In the gorgeous colors drest

Flung from off the purple pinions

Evening spreads throughout the west!"

WORDSWORTH.

WE ask the reader's attention a little further, while we retrace the path we have gone over, and note the distinct stages of Christian progress. Not that these - can always be so defined in individual experience, that the point of transition from one to another will be fully marked and distinguished. Nevertheless they are there; and, described in succession, they will be recognized as separate portions of that way over which the pilgrim travels from the "city of Destruction" to the "city of God."

1. First is the decisive act of self-consecration to the Divine Spirit, that speaks in us and claims us from our infant years. The idea of the heavenly life, once received, will glow in the young mind like a live coal, every thing tending to fortify the holy purpose and make it the governing and unitizing principle of all endeavor. Happy are they who have early embraced this idea, and who, in the first joy

ous exercise of the dawning reason, have not been disobedient to the heavenly vision. They preserve their youthful virtue "englobed " within them, never yielding to depraved hereditary impulsions, not listening to the voice of false charmers, but to the "COME UP HITHER" of the angel powers. The first exercise of the high prerogatives of free moral agency is thus the first stage in a life of holiness. It is the first decisive CHOICE between hereditary or surrounding evil that sways us towards the world of shadows, and the God that ever knocketh at the door of our hearts and calleth us to the world of light.

2. Those who have chosen the good and the true, and the life in conformity with them, sometimes fondly imagine that naught lies before them now but a path of roses. They think the Christian life is only an easy progress from one pleasant prospect to another. But they find they are mistaken. They did not know all that was in them at the beginning. But the God to whom they have consecrated themselves, the Light which they have chosen to follow, is sure to reveal them. He comes within them when invoked and welcomed, first to pour a startling radiance through their disordered nature, and make all its hidden corruption stand confessed. To this end is the discipline of life, to this end the allurements of temptation, to this end all trials and sufferings, God's heralds of mercy in rough disguise, to this end at first his holy word, that holds to human nature an unerring glass. Thus our most secret foes

come out of their ambush and file before us in dark array till our SELF-REVELATION is complete.

3. Then comes the battle of life. Then we understand what the old saints mean, who call the Christian life a life of struggle and warfare. We seem, it may be, to have backslidden from our position, when we embraced in our first enthusiasm the idea of the Christian life; and the blessed prospect that rose on our earlier vision is snatched from view. At the season of our baptismal vows, the heavens were opening and the Holy Dove descending. That has passed away like a dream of paradise, and we find ourselves on the desert of temptation in conflict with its beasts of prey. Our deepest want is now felt; all human aid is utterly insufficient; mere examples and models of perfection mock and afflict us, for we cannot reach them; the teachings of conflicting sects grate on our ears like Babel-noises; we see away and above us the land of peace, but, hedged about with foes, we cannot travel its upward path, while

"Rooted here we stand, and gaze

On those bright steps that heavenward raise
Their practicable way."

Such is the region where lies the CONFLICT OF LIFE, when our weakness is felt most despairingly, and we fling away as worthless our broken shield.

4. Then the want within us points to Him who alone can save. The Mediator, from whom comes to us the all-revealing and renewing Divinity, rises on our sight, as he rose on his early Church, like the

sun shining in his strength. If before he was only a teacher and an example, he is now a quickening and regenerating power. If before we were comfortless and desolate, yet basking in the clear blaze of his Divinity, the Comforter falls on our souls like showers of morning light. If before we trusted to the barren technicologies of schools and sects, they now melt away like web-work before this bright coming of the Lord. If before we trusted to a righteousness imputed, we now rejoice in a righteousness imparted every hour. If then we were only conscious of indwelling sin, we now become daily conscious of the indwelling Christ. If God before had been to us only as an "abstraction" and a "principle," whom prayer could not reach or bring down from the yielding heavens, call loudly as we might, he is now brought near to us in a Mediator that ever floods his Church, his body of true believers, with light and love. A new heaven has opened above us, whence falls the everlasting light, and whence comes the blessed ventilation of renewing gales. Thus we "receive the ATONEMENT."

5. And yet all these heavenly frames of mind might pass away, and these tender communings might grow less and less and cease for ever, did they not prompt us to a new life of action, and give us new delight in doing the Divine will. But Christ thus received seeks a new incarnation in every deed we do. The holy affections wrought within become our permanent possessions, because they are embodied in the daily forth-goings of a Christian life, with all its radiating charities. And since he that doeth

the Divine will shall know of the doctrine, while every revelation prompts to deed, every deed becomes in turn a revelation. So man becomes a new creation, ever rising towards perfection, beneath the hand of the Omnipotent Framer. "I saw a new heaven and a NEW EARTH, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away."

Not always, not often indeed, does our warfare entirely cease, so that we feel that our day of probation is over and our final heaven has begun. The old lusts and appetites, though they grow weaker and weaker, sometimes awake and renew the conflict, after we thought our final victory had been won. Doubts will arise and becloud our faith, and the prospect that opened so fair upon us dissolves away. But he who lives the life we have described, ascends sometimes those sun-smit summits where the tempters never come, above all cares and troubles, above even the clouds and the thunders, where he catches the fore-gleams of the land of peace and has the earnest of its blissful rest. There are

those who, while yet enrobed with mortality, have reached these golden heights never to descend from them, never more to be tempted by sin, never more to be perplexed with doubt, whose placid affections are never ruffled, but rise in perpetual prayer, and on whose ears the sounds from the world they have overcome rise like murmurs from a land afar. Such is entire regeneration. If we follow Christ in the regeneration, and are faithful unto the end, death may find us at that peaceful summit of the western hills.