And, when the village-bell tolled her funeral, you have seen every house emptied as rich and poor came together to weep over the departure of one who was the friend and benefactor of them all. Oh, how glorious must be the flight of such a spirit, ennobled by suffering, victor over death and the grave, to join the peerage of heaven, and to receive a coronet in the skies! Now, characters of this stamp—of imperial type, though found in lowly homes—are invariably formed upon the model which Jesus Christ has presented.
The men of true nobility who are found in almost every village of our land—men devoted to every thing that is good, opposed to every thing that is bad—are men who have deliberately enlisted in the service of Jesus Christ as his disciples, his imitators. They perseveringly struggle against all that is unworthy; they hunger and thirst for every celestial virtue; they battle against temptation in whatever form it may come; cultivate moral courage, that they may boldly advocate the cause of their Saviour, amidst opposition and derision if need be; and thus they are nerved to glorious achievements in triumphing over the allurements to sin, and in bringing themselves into entire subjection to their divine Master.
Material grandeur of crag and cataract has its sublimity;but there is something in moral excellence which far surpasses, in all the elements of the sublime, any combinations of ocean, earth, or sky. When a man towers above his fellow-men in self-denial, in devotion to the welfare of others, in the endeavor to extend virtue, piety, and happiness, a spectacle is presented upon which angels gaze with admiration. When we reflect upon what we may become in social loveliness, in majesty of virtue, in dignity of character, we can hardly wonder that even the Son of God should be willing to die upon the cross to save such a one from the ruin of sin. Here below, in the midst of all man’s frailties and wickedness, we catch glimpses of the angel dignity from which he has fallen, and to which he may again soar.
The wreck is to be repaired; the ruin is to be rebuilt. What a glorious creation will man become, when, redeemed, regenerated, created anew in Christ Jesus, he emerges from the fall in more than the majesty of his original grandeur, no longer but a “little lower” than the angels, but on an equality with the loftiest spirits who bow before God’s throne!
And, oh! it is so sad—the saddest sight of earth—to see one who is created of a noble nature, with glowing intellect and gushing affections, formed to move like an angel of light amidst sorrowing humanity, to cheer the heart-stricken, to strengthen the tempted, to support the weak, to win and save the lost,—it is, indeed, a sad sight to see such a one, all unmindful of his lofty lineage and glorious inheritance, casting every thing that is noble away, and living miserably for self and sin! Earth is full of such melancholy wrecks, as of archangels ruined. All material ruins, all mouldering turrets, and towers of baronial castles,—Melrose, Drachenfels, Heidelberg,—before such moral wrecks, pale into insignificance.
There is a ship in a foreign port. The rude sailors from the forecastle have gone on shore to the drinking-saloon and the dancing-hall to spend the night in revelry and sin. But one has remained behind. With the moral courage of a martyr, he has braved the insults and ridicule of his companions. And now it is midnight. He is kneeling beside his berth inprayer. There is a half-closed book by his side. Does any one doubt what that book is? Is there any other book but the Bible which can inspire him with such moral courage as this? It is from its pages that he has learned that it is better“to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.”[219]
Far away upon the lonely prairie, there was a settler in his solitary log-cabin. From his humble door-sill, nought was to be seen in the wide expanse of many leagues but the prairie’s undulating ocean of grass and flowers, broken here and there with a clump of trees, emerging as an island from the silent sea. In that vast solitude there was a Christian family, impoverished by misfortune, struggling to rear for themselves a new home: it consisted of a father, mother, and nine children. Death came. The mother, who had ever been an angel of light in her home, was stricken down by death. There were no neighbors to help; there was no Christian minister near to offer the supports of the gospel. Sadly the father dug the grave; sadly, with the aid of his weeping children, he bore the sacred remains to their burial; sadly, silently, with a broken heart, he filled up the grave, which entombed all his earthly hopes and joys.
The evening sun was just sinking beneath the distant horizon of the prairie: that Christian father, in his desolated cabin, crushed with grief, had assembled, as had ever been his wont, his little household around him, to seek the blessing of God. They were all bowed together upon their knees. The angels hovering over them could hear the sobs of the children and the moaning prayer of the father.
Upon the table there was one book,—one open book, from which the husband and father had been reading. Can any one doubt what that book was? It was opened at the consoling passage,—
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a placefor you. And, if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself;that where I am, there ye may be also.”[220]