The progress to apostacy is, indeed, usually gradual, though rapid, resembling the irresistible haste of persons travelling down a precipitous path, or the descent of a heavy body towards the earth, whose velocity is accelerated in proportion as it approaches its destination. The first compliance with temptation is accompanied with misgivings--trembling-- restlessness--the very thought of sin is admitted with difficulty, and the determination to practise it, is formed amidst a thousand relentings and prickings of conscience. Still the mind lingers with the object--still the fancy plays about the forbidden fruit, till the hand is stretched forth to gather it--an increased appetite is superinduced, accompanied with a diminished resolution. How many youthful persons, deterred for a time by a religious education and sedate habits, have paused--and paused--and paused on the brink of danger; like Cæsar ere he crossed the Rubicon; their passions and their conscience have held a warm debate--till induced in some fatal hour of illusion to comply, they have progressively advanced to a state of confirmation in guilt, and have made a covenant with hell!
The character of Sapphira seems marked with even a deeper stain of guilt than that of her husband. She had more time for reflection, and received a salutary premonition by the question of Peter. Not to advert to the period in which she might probably be left alone during the various transactions of the sale of the estate, three hours elapsed between the infliction of judgment upon Ananias, and her coming to the apostolic assembly. If her concurrence in this base action had resulted in any degree from mistake, from momentary illusion, or from mere persuasion, she had time to correct her error by immediate repentance: or if she had hitherto sinned with deliberation, it was a time in which conscience might hive been heard, and the wretched backslider have yet been reclaimed. This was the golden moment, the period of long-suffering and mercy, the "accepted time!" Repentance was not yet too late--return to reason and duty was not even now impossible--she might still have retracted her steps, though her worthless husband had suffered for his iniquity, and had passed the boundaries of time, the sacred enclosure, the hallowed ground where celestial mercy dispenses her pardons. Every thing was favourable to penitence. She was alone, and solitude has sometimes shaken the purpose of the sinner, and opened his eyes to an awful perception of the atrociousness of guilt. But Sapphira was "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." Long since she had dismissed every compunctious feeling, and was hurried on to perdition by the fiends of avarice and vanity, to whom she had resigned the dominion of her soul. The inquiry of Peter, pointed and abrupt--"Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much?" Would have startled an ordinary transgressor, and produced those sensations of shame and confusion which a consciousness of detection is calculated to excite--O, if she had even then trembled, confessed her iniquity, and sought forgiveness through the blood which cleanseth from all sin, who will affirm that she could not have obtained mercy, and perhaps escaped both temporal and eternal punishment! But she was obdurate. The falsehood which Ananias had acted, she deliberately affirmed, and justice instantly dismissed her to the society of her kindred transgressor in a state of condemnation. Here, then, we read in characters too legible to be mistaken, that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
If we pursue this subject, it will conduct us far beyond the sight of mere temporal punishment. Sin not only incurs present misery, but has opened the gates of despair, and kindled inextinguishable flames. That wrath which must have inevitably consumed the whole of Adam's posterity, but for the Redeemer's interposition, will rage forever against the impenitent and the apostate. "Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies; thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee. Thou shall make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger; the Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them." "Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest; this shall be the portion of their cup."
It is surely wonderful to holy angels, that by persevering acts of impiety and rebellion, men should voluntarily reduce themselves to a state in which it "had been good for them if they had never been born." Can there be a more important gift than life, or a more valuable quality attached to it than immortality? Yet apostates, by their degeneracy, convert this greatest of blessings into a curse--this noblest good into an infinite evil. "As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, pursueth it to his own death." Who can paint the horror of that moment, when the final, the irrevocable sentence will be passed upon a guilty race--when INFINITE LOVE will denounce INFINITE WO--when every word proceeding from the mouth of eternal justice will prove a poisoned arrow, struck into the destiny of transgressors--when that face which has always illuminated the regions of glory with smiles of ineffable grace, will gather blackness and look despair! O what a crush!--what a ruin!--what a wreck!--How many human temples, defiled by intolerable abominations, will in a moment fall into the gulf of perdition to supply its everlasting fires!--What lightnings will accompany the "thunder of his power!"--What fervid heat will melt these elements--what terror shake the lowest abyss of hell! O, could we descend to the regions of despair, whence "the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever;" or, transported on a seraph's wing, rise to listen only for a single moment, to those rapturous sounds which warble from immortal harps, and bespeak infinite felicity--with what feelings should we return to this probationary state! How should we be alarmed and allured--terrified and enraptured--deterred by "sights of wo," excited by scenes of glory! but, "if we hear not Moses and the prophets," Christ and the apostles: if "God who at sundry times, and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son," to no purpose: "neither should we be persuaded though one rose from the dead."
This dreadful history ought not to excite despondency in trembling saints. Ministerial anxieties are principally excited by a presumptuous state of mind. It is not the timid, the diffident, the cautious, that awaken apprehensions, but the forward, the fearless, the bold. That solicitude which agitates the pious mind, is an effectual antidote against the evil it dreads, while that confidence which possesses the hypocrite, prevents the good it anticipates. The one obtains through fear, the other loses through presumption. The one is victorious, by maintaining a constant petty warfare with all his corruptions; the other is over-thrown through rushing fearlessly forward, and falling into the ambuscade which Satan has prepared for him. Hypocrisy is contriving, full of artifice, and arrogant--sincerity is quite the reverse, aiming to be right--fearing mistake--avoiding even trifling deviations and slight compliances-- "sitting at the feet of Jesus"--"clothed with humility,"--and in a "right mind!"
Let us adore the grace which has hitherto prevented our falling, and humbly depend upon it for future preservation. Conscious of our infantine weakness, let us lean upon the arm of Omnipotence. Under the conduct of him who directed the march of ancient Israel by the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, wo may hope to be upheld, protected, and guided in our journey to Canaan. Hail, happy hour, which shall put us in possession of our rest! Hail, celestial morning, whose bright beams shall disperse the shadows of death, and diffuse the splendours of immortal day upon our inheritance!
In the account of the crime by which Ananias and Sapphira have acquired such an awful celebrity, the agency of SATAN is distinctly marked--"Why," said Peter, hath Satan filled thine heart?--This a subject so seldom treated, and yet of such great importance, that it seems proper to avail ourselves of this statement, in order to examine it with some attention, and to suggest some consolatory reflections to the timid Christian.
The earliest mention we have of Satanic influence is at the fall. Assuming the body of a serpent, this evil spirit attacked the first woman and seduced her into a transgression which "brought death into the world, and all our wo." If Satan were permitted to practise his detestable machinations in the earthly paradise, who will presume to say that it is improbable he may yet be able to tempt man in the wilderness? He knew the position of human affairs, he manifested extraordinary skill in the adaptation of the means which he employed to promote his purposes, and in the incidental conversation, which he contrived with our first parent; and although Christians have run into great extremes in their estimate of his powers, he unquestionably possesses superior knowledge and capacity. His talents like those of other wicked beings, are probably not impaired by his fall, but even sharpened and invigorated by malignant practice. In the aspect of this creation, and in the character of a degenerate world, we may perceive the infernal fiend. We may see his dark hand in the strifes of society, supplying the burning fuel to intemperate passions and discordant societies. We may mark his detestable footsteps in the field of death, staining provinces with blood, where human brothers are polluted with the guilty spirit of assassination, and sacrifice to the glory of war, the hopes of nations, the comforts of life, and the earthly existence of infuriated millions, unprepared to enter an eternal state. In these mighty tempests and desolating whirlwinds, we may hear the hissing breath of his malice, and the yell of his infernal joy. If he seduced our parent in innocency, is it incredible he should seduce her race in their apostasy? if he were the chief agent in the first of sins, is it improbable that he should instigate other crimes peculiarly connected with human misery and degradation?
Scripture, which we take as the "lamp to our feet, and light to our path," represents delusion as the appropriate work of the arch-fiend. It is not for us to inquire by what means he operates upon the mind, because we know so little of the economy of the spiritual world, of the manner in which spirit can operate on spirit, and consequently of the nature of that influence which superior beings are capable of exercising upon others in this world, that we could at best only make a vague conjecture. It is sufficient for all moral purposes to ascertain the fact, that such an influence is possible to evil spirits, and permitted by Providence, that it forms a part of the trial of good men in this state of existence, and often tends to accelerate the too rapid progress of human impiety.
Satan then is possessed of great subtlety, and addicted to wiles, snares, and devices, for the purpose of deluding mankind. He is thus described by Christ: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it." Peter, in addressing Ananias said, "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" "We are not ignorant," says the same apostle, "of Satan's devices." "If our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."