Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ever to strive to go on towards perfection, must be plain to us, if we have ever looked towards perfection; for it is impossible to look in that direction without emotions of love and desire. The Christian ambition, which is ever aspiring at something higher than it has yet arrived at-which forgets the things which are behind, and reaches forth unto the things which are before—is a part of the nature of every man who has been awakened to the needs and powers of his own spirit. When we once see that there is such a mark; when we once hear the high call which proclaims the race open to us, we know that the prize must be worthy of our best exertions; we know that any progress which we make will be its own reward, because it is a progress; we know that, though we shall ever have to say, "not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect," we must ever be ready to say also, with unhesitating resolution, "This one thing I do."

This Christian ambition, this effort to approach nearer to perfection, this straining after the things that are before, which is thus so congenial to a spirit awakened to a consciousness of its own value, and a hope of its permitted progress, it is for us, as the apostle exhorts us, to foster and cherish, to unfold and extend. When this desire has taken full possession of the character, it will show itself in every part of our thoughts and actions, in every line of our occupations and pursuits. Its most important office is in our spiritual concerns: in urging us to a continual solicitude respecting the improvement of our religious condition; in impelling us to aim constantly to approach to the image of God in Christ. And it is principally in order to impress upon you the duty of fostering such aspirations and such endeavours, that we have brought under your notice the apostle's account of his habits of thought and action. But such habits, when fully established in the mind, will effect also, as

[graphic]

themselves, that happiness is to be found in leisure from all difficult employment. It is not unnatural that this foolish thought should be cherished by those who are kept engaged, whether they will or no, in some active work for which they have no great interest. They look forward to being released from drudgery, and think that, when they have nothing to do, they will be happy. But a very little experience will soon convince them that, if they give up active habits, they have taken the sure road to make themselves miserable. God, when he created man, did not endow him with all his wonderful faculties of intellect and moral feeling, without intending that they should be called forth and vigorously exercised; and our Lord and Saviour did not leave heaven and die upon the cross, to save those who are content to live the life of mere vegetables, as if they had nothing to do on earth but to subsist and die. To pass our lives in a course contrary to nature, even the heathen would have told us, is the sure way to be miserable; and it is the sure way also to be wicked. Difficult as it is, then, to serve God in the midst of business, it is much more difficult to serve him in indolence.

Nay, further, it is not more difficult to serve him in the midst of laborious business, than it is in a life of idleness. I draw a marked difference between indolence and idleness; and doubtless (if we may make any such distinction of degree between two states, both of which, however little men in general may be in the habit of regarding them in so serious a light, are in truth unchristian and hateful to God), indolence is the worse and more unchristian habit of the two. It is in itself the more wretched, and also it more incapacitates him whom it overpowers from any active exertion in Christ's service. The indolent man will do anything rather than exert himself to serious thought, and he who does not often think seriously, is no Christian. But most

[graphic]

never feels the invigorating influence of the joyous breath of spring. Or think of those who toil beneath the earth for our advantage, shut out in their labours even from that simple natural enjoyment which our bountiful God seems to have provided for all, in the grateful alternation of day and night, and the changes of the seasons. Every one who, in the duties of a parish or otherwise, has been brought into contact with these classes of men (and if we would have Christian sympathy for all our brethren, we should anxiously look out for opportunities of being brought into contact with them)-every one must know, that, when the period of rest comes, they are so worn out with their labours, that, at first sight, it seems almost impossible for them to collect their thoughts and raise them up to heaven. It was from some feeling of the sad disadvantages to which such men were exposed, that there sprung the wretched tenet of a false heathen philosophy, that he who engaged in such employment was sunk below the level of human nature, and hardly worthy of the name of man. Such wretched statements as this, the Gospel which the Son of God came from heaven to preach to the poor has for ever silenced. Who knows not now, that in God's sight all men are equal? that the soul of the poorest and most oppressed labourer in the mines is of equal value, in God's sight, with that of the greatest of the earth's princes, or the wisest of its philosophers? Who knows not, also, that some of the brightest jewels of our Lord and Saviour's treasury have been found to be enclosed in that rough ore which the foolish heathen spurned from them as worthless? It would shake our whole belief in the goodness of God, if we could suppose that so vast a portion of the human race, as must it seems of necessity be always ground down by toil, were prevented by the position in which God has placed them from fulfilling their heavenly destiny. But there is really, we know by experience, nothing to prevent

« AnteriorContinuar »