"Oh! glorious Father, let my soul pursue
The wondrous labyrinth of love divine,
And follow my Redeemer to the cross.
Nailed to the cross—his hands, his feet, all torn
With agonizing torture!
Stupendous sacrifice! Mysterious love!
He died! The Lord of life—the Saviour died!
All nature sympathizing, felt the shock.
The sun his beams withdrew, and wrapt his face
In sable clouds and midnight's deepest shade,
To mourn the absence of a brighter sun—
The Sun of righteousness eclipsed in death!
A short eclipse. For soon he rose again,
All glorious, to resume his native skies!
Oh, love beyond conception!
In silent rapture all my powers adore."
In the religious experience of Joseph Badger, as intimated by this poem, Christ with him is always the central sun, the presiding power.
"I do not think," says Mr. B., "that persons can tell their religious experience, if their change is real and they have fully felt the effects of love divine. They are led to say with St. Peter, that it is 'joy unspeakable and full of glory.' Human language cannot describe the fulness and sweetness of the religion of Christ. Viewing the invisible depth of its wealth, how faint are our descriptions? How weak our best comparisons, and the metaphors by which we attempt to represent it! The soul which has become a partaker of the divine nature, of its love, is ever ready to exclaim—'The half had never been told me;' yet words, and other imperfect signs, will easily indicate the presence of the reality enjoyed.
"Eighteen hundred and eleven! that memorable year will never be forgotten by thousands now living, on account of the victorious spread of the Gospel in North America. Generations yet unborn will trace the pages of ecclesiastical history with anxiety and delight, to learn what transpired among their ancestors during this year. But how soon, when a heavenly influence is in the ascendant, some counteracting power will enter the field with ruinous violence! The cruel war soon succeeded, and devastation spread her vermilion garb over our happy and enlightened land.
"As I have already alluded, in a former chapter, to the feelings of moral conviction that wrought in my breast, I will only say that they began with this year, and were of a kind neither to be drowned nor driven away. Not for Adam's sins, or the sins of our fathers, did I feel condemned; it was only for such as belonged to me. Light had come and I had chosen darkness. I therefore cast no reflections on any class of persons, as the Gospel, conscience, and the creation, seemed to unite in proclaiming—'Thou art the man;' and under a sense of my ingratitude to Jesus, the sinner's Friend, I felt to add my hearty Amen, and say, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.'"
In the pride of philosophical speculation, there are knowing ones who rob the rich idea of God of personality; also, in the attempts to deify the sacred parchments of Palestine, others unwittingly superannuate the Holy Ghost, driving us all to live solely upon ancient words—words that were undoubtedly its breathings when spoken. But one page from the journal of such an experience as that of Mr. Badger is better than all learned theory. Every page referring to his mind's exercise abounds in feeling—earnest, real feeling. He believes in the God of action, who converts the repentant soul by his holy, actual agency; in Jesus he believes as the lone sinner's Friend and Saviour; in the Holy Spirit he confides, not doubting its real striving in his own heart; in the oracles of prophets, of Jesus, and of the apostles, he holds unwavering faith that they are God's real, eternal word; whilst his frequent and many tears in private attest his deep sincerity in seeking his soul's salvation. He recognizes the supernatural, the miraculous, in the conversion of the sinner; and whatever we may concede to the rationalistic statement on this subject in our severely philosophical moods, it is certain that the miraculous statement is the one which more than it concentrates the diviner charm and the more commanding energy. It has ever been so; the statement wearing the outward miraculous hue, is the strong one—the one that holds the element of triumph; and though we do not hold that any work of God with man violates the constitution and laws of the human mind, it would have struck us with diminished effect had St. Paul, before Agrippa, discoursed on the accordance of his conversion with some a priori argument for an abstract Christianity, or of its accordance with his own nature, and with all nature. This intellectualizing on great vital facts, whatever may be its philosophical merits, can never come up to the bold and picturesque sublimity of the words—"At mid-day, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me; and I heard a voice speaking unto me and saying, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Such passages reach the soul in every clime, as abstraction never could; and from the reverence we have been accustomed to pay to universal convictions, and from the effect of such eloquence on our own feelings, we believe that mankind have not been fools in the cherishing of faith which brings Divinity into active and wonder-causing contact with humanity. If we have a God in our faith, let us have one who can do something, say something, and impart something to them who ask him, and not a tender abstraction who has no thunder for transgressors, and who is so lenient and plausible that no lawless spirit shall regard him as any essential obstruction in his way. Characters of most energy always grow up under the faith of God's omnipotence, of his awful majesty, beautified by justice and love.
The youth of this memoir looked around upon the dark world, and upward to the great God for his spirit's rest, and searched through the labyrinth of his own conflicting emotions to find a rock for his feet. Often his "eyes were rivers of waters;" and, "as I looked around for comfort, every place revealed some circumstance that gave to grief a keener edge." He is now so deeply touched by the Holy Spirit that nothing filled him with delight like the tender portraiture of the love of Christ; the profane word was now a loathed and jarring discord in his ear; the songs of the wicked deepened his sadness, and often did he repeat to himself, in tears, the well-known lines, "Alas! and did my Saviour bleed!" which he tells us had the power to penetrate his heart of hearts, whilst the most secret and hidden recesses of the wild witnessed his humble thank-offerings of praise and contrite confessions of sin. Without a minister to aid him, and without the sustaining sympathy of a single human creature, he continued to wage his warfare with the powers of darkness. A young man, alone, with resolves and feelings unknown to man, longing for the clouds of his being to disperse, and for the influx of the immortal light to crown his life! This spectacle, however it may strike the mere formalist and the seeker of material good, is one which, to us, joins with myriads of heart-histories in different climes, to attest the derivation of the soul from God, to declare its yearnings and struggles against the obstacles of sin and sense, that it may regain the atmosphere and light of its native original heaven.
Contrary to the customs of his family, he went, once in a great while, to the Methodist meetings, a denomination whose power to reach the popular mind all over the world is known and honored. At one of these meetings, July, 1811, the persons present supposed, from his former reputation for rudeness, that he was there perhaps to criticise derisively their humble manner of worship. When Mrs. Tilden arose and said, "The eyes of the world are upon us, and if any came here to feast upon our failings, or to spy out our liberties, let us starve them to death, by living such lives that they can find no action of which to speak reproachfully"—after a few moments, he arose and said:
"I very much regret that any of my neighbors and friends should, for one moment, imagine me as an enemy, or suppose that I came here to ridicule what may pass before me. Far be it from my mind. I believe religion is what all men need to make them happy in time and eternity. With all my heart I wish you well and hope you will go on your way rejoicing."