"Yes, Sir, I do; because I now perceive that our life is given for a nobler purpose than I ever conceived before. I used to think that it was given us for the acquisition of wealth and honour, and for the gratification of the taste and feeling; but now I believe that the original design of its bestowment is that we may honour and love God, and, through the mediation of Jesus Christ, be prepared to enjoy His presence in the eternal world. But though I am more attached to life than ever, I have no objection to resign it, when it may please God to call me to do so. At my advanced age, though my health is good, and my constitution unbroken, I cannot expect to live many years; yet I feel the strong pulsation of a life over which neither the first nor the second death have any power. I should like to live on earth, if it were the will of God, till I see my dear children embrace the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ; but if I should be removed before that event takes place, I have no doubt but I shall unite with the ministering angels and the spirits of the redeemed in celebrating it in His presence."
"I am happy to hear you speak with so much confidence on such an important subject, as I have long thought that the fears which Christian parents so often and so long cherish respecting the salvation of their children, are no less dishonourable to God than destructive of their own peace. He has commanded us to use the means for the conveyance of truth to their minds; and he has given us many promises of sure success; and ought we, after all this, to despair? He may withhold the renovating power, to make us more importunate in prayer, and to convince us that human means alone will not prove effectual; but still it is our duty and our privilege to expect that his word shall not return unto him void, but that it shall accomplish that which he pleases, and prosper in the thing whereto he sends it."
I was much interested by the conversation of my host, and my gratification was increased by hearing that he attended the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Guion, of whom he spoke with all the warmth of filial attachment; that he was personally acquainted with my esteemed friend, the Rev. Mr. Ingleby; and had often heard of Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, though he knew them not. I now bade this aged couple farewell, and set out to retrace my steps to Fairmount, highly pleased with the adventures of the day, which I found as conducive to my mental and spiritual improvement, as they had been beneficial to my health.
SPIRITUAL REGENERATION A REALITY.
An occurrence took place in the course of the day which revived the question of the preceding evening. Two funerals passed along the road in front of Mr. Roscoe's mansion. The first was that of a man, who died in the prime of life; and the second was that of an infant, who expired soon after its birth. The man had been a poacher, and, like most who devote themselves to illicit practices, he had lived a dissolute life. He rarely if ever attended church; usually spent his Sabbaths in idleness, or in the indulgence of his vicious propensities; was notorious for the vulgarity and impurity of his manners; and such was his aversion to religion, that when the Rev. Mr. Cole called to see him, only a few days before his death, he bluntly told him that as he had lived without religion, he had made up his mind to die without it.
The infant was the first-born of an interesting couple, who had been married little more than twelve months. They lived in a genteel residence at the farther end of the village, and were celebrated amongst their neighbours no less for their affection for each other, than the sufferings which they endured before their union was consummated. The cupidity of their parents kept them apart for a period nearly as long as Jacob served for his beloved Rachel, when death came, and by leaving them orphans, broke down the barrier which had obstructed their union. But they were both too deeply affected by their loss to evince any symptoms of pleasure; and such was the respect in which they held the memory of their parents, that they permitted one year to pass over their heads before they were married. On the nuptial morning, a large number of the villagers greeted them with their simple benedictions as they left the church; and when they alighted from the carriage to enter their own dwelling, they were surrounded by a group of females dressed in white, who presented them with a garland of flowers—expressing, at the same time, a wish that their joy might prove of a less fading nature.
"It is," said Mr. Roscoe, "by bringing the incidents and facts of real life to bear on the doctrines of our belief, that we are able to test them. The man who has just gone to his grave was the son of the parish clerk, and I well remember when he was baptized. If regeneration takes place when the ceremony of baptism is performed, he was then made a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. But what moral good resulted from this supposed change in his state and character? None. He grew up a wild lad—he lived without religion—and without it he died. But the child whose funeral we have just seen pass—this babe, the first-fruits of conjugal bliss, which just made its appearance in this valley of weeping, a branch too tender to thrive in such an uncongenial soil, after languishing for a few seconds, experienced a premature decay. It was a branch from the wild olive, and required the same spiritual grafting to fit it to luxuriate in the garden of the Lord as a more hardy plant. But if this spiritual operation cannot be performed except when the sacrament of baptism is administered, as some assert, then is this tender scion a brier or a thorn, whose end is to be burned, for it withered and died before the waters of healing could be procured. The impure and impious ruffian, who dies in the act of scornfully rejecting the Christian faith, passes at once into the kingdom of heaven, and takes rank with prophets, and apostles, and martyrs; while the little lovely babe, when waking up into a state of consciousness, instead of feeling the tender embraces of a mother, is startled into terror and anguish, by the sight and sound of infernal and lost spirits! Really this baptismal regeneration of the Tractarian churchman is such a monstrous doctrine, that I am at a loss to conceive how any man of common sense and humane feeling can appear as its advocate; it is a libel on the Christian faith, a daring outrage on parental feeling, and altogether a fatal delusion."