True religion hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart, is simple, free, and attractive. It enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and it lessens the pangs of death. It is the coronet by token of which God makes you a princess in his family and an heir to his brightest glories, the sweetest pleasures, the noblest privileges, and the brightest honors of his kingdom. It is a star which beams the brighter in heaven the darker on earth grows the night.
When the rising sun shed its rays on Memnon's statue it awakened music in the heart of stone. Religion does the same with nature. Without religion you are a wandering star. You are a voiceless bird. You are a motionless brook. The strings of your heart are not in tune with the chords which the Infinite hand sweeps as he evolves the music of the universe. Your being does not respond to the touch of Providence, and if beauty and truth and goodness come down to you like angels out of heaven and sing you their sweetest songs, you do not see their wings, nor recognize their home and parentage.
True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all real joys, and even procure for us the highest pleasures. While it seems to have no other object than the felicity of another life it constitutes the chief happiness of the present. There are no principles but those of religion to be depended on in cases of real distress, and these are able to encounter the worst emergencies and to bear us up under all the changes and chances to which our life is subject. The difficulties of life teach us wisdom, its vainglories humility, its calumnies pity, its hopes resignation, its sufferings charity, its afflictions fortitude, its necessities prudence, its brevity the value of time, and its dangers and uncertainties a constant dependence upon a higher and all-protecting power.
All natural results are spontaneous. The diamond sparkles without effort, and the flowers open naturally beneath the Summer rain. Religion is also a natural thing—as spontaneous as it is to weep, to love, or to rejoice. There is not a heart but has its moments of longing—yearning for something better, nobler, holier, than it knows now; this bespeaks the religious aspiration of every heart. Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace. It may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness.
Religion is not proved and established by logic. It is, of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable. It is of instinct, and not of reason. It is a matter of feeling, and not of opinion. Religion is placing the soul in harmony with God and his laws. God is the perfect supreme soul, and your souls are made in the image of his, and, like all created things, are subject to certain mutable laws. The transgression of these laws damages your souls—warps them, stunts their growth, outrages them.
You can only be manly or attain to a manly growth by preserving your true relations and strict obedience to the laws of your being. God has given you appetites, and he meant that they should be to you a source of happiness, but always in a way which shall not interfere with your spiritual growth and development. He gave you desires for earthly happiness. He planted in you the love of human praise, enjoyment of society, the faculty of finding happiness in all of his works. He gave you his works to enjoy, but you can only enjoy them truly when you regard them as blessings from the great Giver to feed, and not starve, your higher nature. There is not a true joy in life which you are required to deprive yourself of in being faithful to him and his laws. Without obedience to law your soul can not be healthful, and it is only to a healthful soul that pleasure comes with its natural, its divine, aroma.
Some well-meaning Christians tremble for their salvation, because they have never gone through that valley of tears and of sorrow which they have been taught to consider as an ordeal that must be passed through before they can arrive at regeneration. We can but think that such souls mistake the nature of religion. The slightest sorrow for sins is sufficient if it produces amendment, but the greatest is insufficient if it do not. By their own fruits let them prove themselves, for some soils will take the good seed without being watered by tears or harrowed up by afflictions.
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life—by indifference, which is the most common; by philosophy, which is the most ostentatious; and by religion, which is the most effectual. It has been said, "Philosophy readily triumphs over past or future evils, but that present evils triumph over philosophy." Philosophy is a goddess whose head is, indeed, in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; attempts more than she accomplishes and promises more than she performs. She can teach us to hear of the calamities of others with magnanimity, but it is religion only that can teach us to bear our own with resignation.
Whoever thinks of life as something that could exist in its best form without religion is in ignorance of both. Life and religion is one, or neither is any thing. Religion is the good to which all things tend; which gives to life all its importance, to eternity all its glory. Apart from religion man is a shadow, his very existence a riddle, and the stupendous scenes around him as incoherent and unmeaning as the leaves which the sibyl scattered in the wind.
We are surrounded by motives to religion and devotion if we would but mind them. The poor are designed to excite our liberality, the miserable our pity, the sick our assistance, the ignorant our instruction, those that are fallen our helping hand. In those who are vain we see the vanity of the world, in those who are wicked our own frailty. When we see good men rewarded it confirms our hopes, and when evil men are punished it excites our fears. He that grows old without religious hopes, as he declines into age, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding him, falls into a gulf of misery, in which every reflection must plague him deeper and deeper.