SPRING. APRIL 23. Thou renewest the face of the earth. 121 CREATION around wears that freshness which we suppose it had when it came from the hands of its Maker. The earth by an annual miracle, rises again, as from her grave, into life and beauty. The most degraded of barbarous tribes, prepare some rude solemnity to express the renewal of their joy and praise. In obedience to this pleasing instinct of religion, let us gather up the reflections which this season suggests. Spring exhibits the power of God. This power is seen. Lately, the earth lay in almost chaotic desolation; now it is lighted up in glory and in promise. The word, let it be, has again gone forth, and the resources of nature are developed, to sustain, console and enrap ture man. Spring exhibits the goodness of God. In no hours of existence are the traces of his love so powerfully marked upon nature, as in the present. It is, in a peculiar manner, the season of happiness. The vegetable world is bursting into life to promise man health and joy. The animal creation is exulting. Myriads of seen and unseen beings are rising from every element displaying the goodness of God as they sport in their new born existence. All are filled with animation and prodigal of joy. While every scene delights the eye and gratifies the heart, shall we not feel that God is good? Spring is an emblem of the Gospel, as it reminds us of the darkness and gloom by which it was preceded. It was the winter of humanity, wherein men wandered amid the severities which surrounded them, uncheered by any effulgence from heaven. The Son of God came to bring light; and he has spread moral verdure over a cold waste. His gospel is the day-spring from on high-it is the morning spread upon the mountains-it is the sun of truth shining upon those who sat in darkness. The moral desert has rejoiced, and the flowers of faith and hope have blown, warmed into life by the sun of righteousness. The Spring reminds us of innocence. It is the youth of the year we are witnessing. It reminds us of the innocence in which we are created, and which the gospel charges us to retain in all its freshness and fragrance. It is the time of hope. All preparations aim at the harvest; and our probation should be introductory to celestial bliss. It is the time of industry. Nature is unwearied in her efforts for man's good. Shall we not learn to be up and diligent ? Every thing is now answering the purposes of its existence except the idle man. Unless we sow the good seed of piety, temperance, faithfulness, industry and kindness, we cannot reap the fruits of heaven. Spring reminds us of our resurrection. The seeds that were cast into the ground, have resumed the body which pleased the Creator. We will enquire no more-how are the dead raised up, and with what bodies do they come ? My young friends-while nature at this season is ever speaking to you, receive the lesson she so beautifully imparts, and remember, that a blighted spring makes a barren year, and that the vernal flowers, however beautiful and gay, are intended by nature, only as preparatives to the autumnal fruits. We are not of the night, nor of darkness; therefore let us not sleep as de others. To save time, is to lengthen out existence; and to make the utmost of our brief probation is a moral duty. Early rising multiplies time. Suppose you rise two hours earlier-this gives you fourteen additional working hours to your existence every week, i. e. another day! The difference between rising at five and seven o'clock in the morning for the space of forty years, supposing you to go to bed at the same hour of the night, is nearly equivalent to the addition of ten working years to your life. Early rising prevents indecision of character. How many hours are wasted in half resolutions to rise, which is acknowledging the very duty therein neglected. The joys of conquest are not yours. You condemn your irresolution, the consciousness of which inflicts upon you all the disgrace of a cowardly surrender, yet fails to call forth the struggle of contest, or to stimulate to the honour of victory. You regret the loss of time which you make no effort to redeem. You wish without possessing, and grieve without reforming. Thus you become a slave to a bad habit, and gradually weaken your decision of character. Early rising promotes industry. We have much to do, and all in an uncertain space. It is the most culpable death to have life, and not to use it. Our blessed Saviour called him who neglected to trade with his talent, "a wicked and slothful servant.” There is no calling, from the sceptre to the spade, which does not require much labour of the head or hand, or both. In the domestic circle, the want of order and peace, arises from the want of that systematic arrangement, which is planned and forwarded by early hours. If the business of the family is in advance in the morning, this gain is felt through the whole day. It is lamentable to see how some families drag through existence; and all because each day is begun, when others consider it as partly spent. It is a wretched example to set before children and domestics. Early rising promotes health. A renowned physician in his "essay on health and long life," says, nothing can be more prejudicial, especially to tender constitutions, than lying long in bed, after one is distinctly awake, or has slept a reasonable time. It necessarily thickens the juices, enervates the solids and weakens the constitution. Lord Mansfield, who had long experience at the bar and on the bench, undertook to ascertain, whether a person must be an early riser in order to live long? After examining a great number, he found every one had been early risers. Old Parr who lived one hundred and fifty two years, gives this recipe for long life. "Keep your head cool by temperance, your feet warm by exercise. Rise early, and go to bed soon. Never eat till you are hungry, nor drink but when nature requires it." The Bible records it of all its best characters that "they rose up early in the morning."-We are as morally accountable for the hours between waking and rising as for any in our existence. When we wake, it is nature's hint that we have rest enough. Let us redeem time-but, above all, may the day spring from on high visit us, and the day star of religion rise in our hearts. THE MIND UNSATISFIED WITHOUT GOD. APRIL 25. 123 The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. THE immortal mind cannot fill itself with perishable food. The child runs to its parent for safety, support and consolation; the parent by a like instinct, resorts to the highest source of help. We need something beyond ourselves. We are indigent, and insufficient to our own highest happiness, and therefore we naturally go out of ourselves for satisfaction. If there was not another life, our business would be, not to alarm, the thinking powers, but to lay our too active and unquiet thoughts to rest. Our main comfort would be to forget our misery and ourselves; to forget that after we have toiled out the long day of human life, instead of receiving our wages at its close, we are to sink into eternal sleep. But nature has set man in motion, and filled him with intellectual and moral desires. He constantly feels he can attain more, and is restless for the acquisition now. If he had a fund of happiness within himself, why ever rove abroad for foreign amusements? Even amusements are sought rather to suspend a sense of uneasiness, than to give any solid satisfaction. There is a kind of desolation in self dependence, which the mind instinctively shuns.-Why is the soul ever reluctant to contemplate itself, willing to escape the examination of that everloved, yet ever avoided object? Why is it, that the mind, whose active energy permits it to range through the universe, should feel at its return a flagging of its vivacity, and a forlorn and drowsy melancholy creeping over it? Whence is it, but that the soul finds within itself, a frightful void of solid happiness? True, a succession of striking incidents may make the soul forget its poverty amid its self reliance; yet, when the track of noisy life is left, the insupportable burden returns, and convinces man, that his felicity cannot be separated from God his Creator or from man his brother. You fancy the individual, whose daily labour just serves to get his daily bread, and whose daily bread just refreshes him to undergo his daily labour, to be miserable—perhaps he is so. Would you make him more miserable?-give him a fortune which shall set him at rest from his labours and leave him nothing to do: and then the wearisomeness which resulted from a continual drudgery, will be nothing comparable to another kind of fatigue-the being tired of himself. If then we ask, who will shew us any good? who will point out the way to felicity? we answer, our hope is in God. He only can satisfy the desires he has implanted. He can support us under trial and refresh us with spirit. He can illumine by the beams of his truth and cheer by the influence of his favour, the intellectual and moral universe which he has created. In making man in his own image, he has given him angelic powers, and promises a future scene of action adequate to their full developement. This and this alone meets our wants and gives rest to our souls. Let us, then, live to God and Christ, and immortality. Religion assimulates us to eternal truth, thus giving us a foretaste of heaven. It is most powerful in affliction; because it shows that even affliction itself can make man nobler than he was. To the poor and oppressed, religion flings on the short twilight, a portion of the splendour of that immortality into which it is almost dawning; and when life is closing, it is itself the first joy of that immortality which begins. 124 THE DOUBLE MINDED MAN. APRIL 26. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. THAT is the most perfect state of human nature, in which the guidance of the enlightened judgment is seconded by a steady and generous ardour.-The double minded man, may be considered as divided in his judgment and in his inclination. Divided in judgment-having thought, but thought superficially, upon the concurrent evidences of religious truth, "he is carried about with every wind of doctrine." Hence the light which guides him is not a single and steady, but a wandering and bewildering light. Divided in inclination-not averse to receive good impressions, yet unapt to retain them. Charmed today with the beautiful aspect of innocence and virtue; tomorrow giving himself up to sloth and voluptuousness, or lost in the dream of worldly avarice and ambition. Such is the double minded man; his life by turns illuminated with gleams of wisdom, and then shadowed by the darkness of folly. How does he appear to others?-We look for approbation to those of the same character with ourselves. The virtuous esteem the virtuous, and the depraved seek countenance in the multitude of offenders. But the unstable ever jarring with himself and others, finds no refuge from contempt. If he turns to men of confirmed virtue, or to the utterly abandoned, from which can he hope to meet the welcome of congeniality, or the smile of complacency? To the eminently good, he is an object of humiliating compassion; to the very profligate, of derision. Every change of conduct adds his own testimony to the suffrage of the world; either that his understanding is so weak as to be always wavering between truth and errour; or that his resolution is so frail as to fluctuate incessantly between acknowledged good and evil.-Some may be found so hardened as to glory in depravity, but no man glories in inconsistency. The double minded man, then, must give up all pretensions to dignity of character. Does he at any time look for consolation in the paths of innocence and holiness-his vicious habits, still uneradicated, will render his duties irksome to him, whenever they allow him to fulfil them—and if he seek for gratification in the mazes of vice, he has virtuous feelings which will infallibly make him miserable in a vicious course, if they cannot keep him steadfast in the practice of his duty. His mind, therefore, is torn by struggling passions; his life, a scene of conflict, which may be compared to civil war, in which rival parties, alternately defeated and victorious, inflict and suffer reciprocal calamities; and whichsoever prevails, nothing is to be seen but the burning of towns, the laying waste of provinces, confusion and desolation on every side. But, he trembles and grieves. He resolves to part with his former delights, and to discipline his mind. He remembers his resolution a few weeks only-he undergoes the most mortifying privations, performs the hardest duties, submits even to revolting rigours, and as soon as the toil and uneasiness are almost over, slides back into his ancient habits, and falls in the midst of his triumph! O that to God my constant mind SUFFERINGS OF THE IRRESOLUTE MIND. APRIL 27. 125 For the good that I would, I do not but the evil which I would not, that I do. THERE are few defects in the human character which so completely annihilate one's influence as irresolution. Those who are always balancing between right and wrong, often resolve on amendment. They would shun the temptations which they have found too powerful, and cultivate the good principles they have so often overcome. Yet they do neither. While the mind is thus divided, what can be expected but wavering counsels and a distracted conduct? We cannot serve God and mammon. He who kneels at the world's altar, must partake of the world's fluctuation and mutability; while he who is supremely bent on God, will maintain his course through every vicissitude-like the mariner, who, unmoved by wandering meteors, fixes his eye upon the pole, and steers steadily and securely through the bosom of the deep. Estimate, if you can, the sufferings of the wavering mind! He may have thrown off his serious thoughts, but he cannot throw off the deep consciousness of a mind divided against itself; which like the subterraneous fires that rage in the cavities of a mountain, blot the heavens with smoke, and tinge the very flowers that grow upon the surface. Alas! when a man is conscious of breaking through the secret resolutions of his own mind; of violating injunctions to which he has been professing perpetual obedience; renewing transgressions which he has been lamenting in anguish ; and which will shortly make him abhor himself, and which may possibly fill up the measure of his guilt and seal his doom! What a scene of internal misery, to be conscious while knowing his duty, of wanting spirit and resolution to perform it; to possess an understanding, yet violate its best dictates; to have a heart, yet transgress its purest sentiments; to hear the voice of conscience and of God recalling him from ruin, yet find himself hurried on by the headstrong fury of his undisciplined passions! What must be the feelings of that man who is made alternately the sport of the counter currents of appetite, fashion, and reason. He has been in the very crisis of a blessed change; he had begun to taste the sweets of liberty, yet is ensnared again! O, what must his feelings be, while renewing and perpetuating his ignominious bondage-As the entrance. upon virtue has its difficulties, so that of vice is beset with terrors; the man consequently, who is always wavering between sin and duty, who traverses, over and over, the borders of both, making no progress in either, is ever involved in rugged and broken paths, without ever reaching those regions of hope and joy which belong to established virtue, and without ever attaining that preeminence in vice which is proof against the anguish of reflection! Ah! wretched souls, who still remain A nobler toil may I sustain, A nobler satisfaction win. I would resolve with all my heart, With all my powers to serve thee, Lord! Nor from thy precepts e'er depart : |