It is in this process alone, that you can know, and be known by your Saviour: and unless you enter upon this, and seek in good earnest to be intimately acquainted with him, thus revealing himself in your hearts; he will one day have good reason to say to you, as he did to his disciple in the text, "Have I been so long time with you, and yet have you not known me?"
DISCOURSE XV.
Human Life a Pilgrimage.
Psalm xxxix. Part of Ver. 12.
"For I am a Stranger with thee, and a Sojourner, as all my Fathers were."
In every age of the world, and among people of every nation and language under heaven, (if we may credit the testimony of history and experience) there have been found many virtuous, thoughtful, and enquiring minds; who, from an attentive observation of the moral as well as physical disorders incident to the present system of things, from a personal experience of the unavoidable miseries consequent thereupon, and from a secret irresistible desire and longing after some superior but unknown state of being, have been led to form these most philosophical and pious conclusions:
That their present mode of existence could not possibly be as that for which they were originally intended by a being of Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, and Love; that the intelligent and immortal spirit within them, could not have been created merely to animate a dark terrestrial body, and to be subject to the clamorous demands of animal nature; that the fair signatures of beauty, order, and love, which they still saw, and felt, and admired, within and without them, could not have been originally impressed by the Divine Fiat upon that mixture of darkness, deformity and confusion, in which they now appear; that the primeval harmony and lustre of the creation must, by some means or other, have been marred and spoiled; and that, for these reasons, they could not but consider themselves as the fallen inhabitants of a fallen world.
That these strange disorders must have proceeded solely from the depravity of some created intelligences, they concluded, not only from their own conceptions of the spotless purity and goodness of the Divine Nature, but from their own observation and experience of the innumerable evils that were produced in themselves and others, when ever their wills and affections deviated from the strait paths of virtue, and wandered in the mazes of vice. And yet they saw—and yet they felt—that so numerous and powerful were the temptations and suggestions on the side of vice, that nought but the kind interposition of their good and powerful Creator, nought but the super-natural illumination and direction of his Blessed Spirit, could rescue them from the dominion of their passions, open their understanding to the sight of Truth, and incline their will to the pursuit and practice of Goodness. This affectionate intercourse with their Creator, they considered as the only source of their virtue and happiness in this life, as the only earnest of their future and final felicity in the next. Hence they regarded themselves as strangers and exiles in a foreign land, and looked upon death as the season of their deliverance, of their return to their native country, and re-union with their Father and kindred spirits in glory.
Many traces of this sublime philosophy do we meet with in the lives and writings of the virtuous heathen. For, however they may differ from us in their modes of conception and expression, a discerning mind will soon discover, that their feelings were congenial with our own; and that they wanted but the aids of external revelation to enable them to "speak what they knew, and testify what they saw," in the same language which we are instructed to use.
The Sacred Writings, however, afford us the noblest and most indubitable testimonies to the great truths mentioned above. For whatsoever scattered rays of knowledge or of goodness are found here and there gleaming through the shades of paganism;—whatsoever the thrice-great Hermes delivered as oracles from his sacred tripos;—whatsoever Pythagoras, Socrates, Epictetus, Zoroaster, or Confucius, have laboured to inculcate upon the hearts of their disciples—all this, and infinitely more, without any corrupt or superstitious mixture, do we find expressly revealed, with all the marks of Divine Authority, in the Holy Scriptures—all this, and infinitely more, do we find beautifully exemplified in those lives and sayings of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, which are recorded for our instruction and imitation in the Old Testament as well as in the New.