We have not written this for any preacher older than ourself, but for the sake of young men, whom we desire to see useful, influential, and well sustained ministers of the Word of God. All such we entreat, to study and labor to do the Lord’s work, and he will supply their wants out of his inexhaustible storehouse.
[PRESENT PUNISHMENT WILL NOT SAVE.]
THE mere circumstance of a man being punished for his sins in this life, has nothing in it to purify his soul, purge his conscience, or prepare him for the enjoyment of God. The Egyptians, the Antediluvians, the Sodomites, and the Jews, had a just recompense of reward sent upon them in this world, but this only sent them down to tartareous, to be reserved, with the angels that sinned, to the judgment of the great day, where, we are assured, Sodom and Gomorrah shall appear. Some men appear to think, that if men are punished, to use their own style, as much as their sins deserve, they must necessarily be happy then. But men can not be happy—can not enjoy God, without justification, purification of heart and conscience; and, unless thus prepared for the enjoyment of God, they can not enjoy the world to come. This is a work that punishment can not do. The hurling of angels, that sinned, down to hell, the drowning of antediluvians and Egyptians, the burning of Sodomites, and slaying of Jews, did not purify one of them. If men live in unbelief, commit some capital offence, and are executed for it, though this may be a just recompense of reward, it will not purify their souls and prepare them to enjoy God. When men pass the boundary line of life, they pass all the means, in the economy of God, for preparing them for heaven, and no punishment will ever do what the grace of God could not do.
[THE MISSION OF INFIDELS.]
THE mission of infidels is not to build up anything but to pull down churches, civil laws, governments, morals, the characters of men and women, peace, happiness, protection of home, property and life. They come with a mission of denials of the truths contained in the Bible—a mission of war upon the Bible, religion, and the friends of purity and mercy. They come not with a mission of peace and good will to man, but a mission of hatred towards the Bible and all it enjoins—a mission to pull down and destroy—to spread desolation among other men’s labors and lay their work in ruins, leaving nothing but wrecks and devastation. They come to neutralize, paralize and dishearten all efforts for the amelioration of man’s condition—to discourage, enfeeble and ignore all efforts to rise. They come not into our midst with a warm, kind and affectionate appeal to the attentive, thinking and reflective portion,—the more spiritually minded; but appeal to the lukewarm, back-sliding, or the apostate, who is beginning to stand at a distance, who already is descending upon the retrograde plane—not to rescue him, or to prevent his retrograde movement, but to accelerate it. The appeal to him is not to give him confidence, but to destroy his confidence in his Bible, his religion, his brethren, and fill him with doubts and distrusts. It is not to embolden him, but to intimidate him and fill him with fears, and discourage him from all good forever.
The mission of infidels is not to enlighten, civilize and ennoble the nations. They have never enlightened, civilized or elevated a nation or a people since the world was made. They have never organized society, established peace and order in any place on this earth. They have established no civil institutions, no system of morals, no code of laws, no system of education, and no institutions of learning that deserve the name. Even the literature of the country has almost entirely been left to the believers in the Bible. It is an easy work to pull down civil government, subvert the foundation of organization, condemn the means of enlightenment, and object to them. It is an easy matter to deny everything and prove nothing; to doubt, vacillate and fear. It is an easy matter to distrust, fill others with distrust, destroy confidence, throw everything into confusion and uncertainty. Some men have fallen so fully into this state, that they hardly will venture to say they believe anything, have confidence in anything, or know anything. One man, under the blinding, benumbing and stupifying influence of unbelief, when asked whether he knew that he existed, hesitated to say he did.