The History of Christianity, John S. C. Abbott [ebook reader browser .txt] 📗

We have in the Bible the history of the world, and the biography of its leading individuals, from the dawn of creation until those modern days in which secular history takes up the record. Through all these ages not a single man can be found, who by the purity of his own life, by the beneficent influence of his example, and by his self-denying efforts to promote the happiness of others, has not developed the principles uttered by the lips of Jesus.

Indeed, there is an absolute, invincible necessity that every truly good man should embrace these principles, and diffuse them to the utmost of his power. The moment one awakes to the grandeur of his own being,—an immortal created in the image of God,—and begins to breathe the prayer, “O God! help me to resist every sin, and aid me to cherish every virtue,” he finds at once, that, infinitely above all other books, the Bible is the book to help him in this new and noble life. He finds that every duty which his conscience suggests that he ought to perform, the religion of Jesus urges upon him by motives of infinite weight. He finds that every allurement, every indulgence, which would retard his moral growth, the religion of Jesus urges him, by motives of infinite weight, to avoid.

All through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, there is one continual strain of urgency, enforced by every variety of argument, warning, and illustration, to aid a man to attain a celestial character.

Ought we to watch over our bodies, that by appetite and passion they be not defiled; over our thoughts, that impurity enter not the secret chambers of the soul; over our words, that we may ever speak as in the audience-chamber of God; over our minds, that we may store them with all valuable knowledge; over our hearts, that we may love God our Father, and man our brother; over our actions, that every deed may be such as God will approve? Then it is to Jesus of Nazareth we must look as our teacher, our guide, our helper.

The Bible is the book which the good mother gives her boy as he goes from home; and she knows full well, that if her boy will read that book daily, and make it the guide of his life, he will be safe for time and for eternity. Many a man has said years after a sainted mother has ascended to her crown, “It was the Bible which my mother gave me which rescued me from ruin.”

How noble is the character of the Christian wife and mother formed upon the model of Jesus the Christ! Many of our readers have seen the most beautiful exemplification of this in their own homes. You have seen your mother all-forgetful of herself in her generous devotion to others. You have seen her moving like an angel of light in the dark homes of poverty, and around beds of suffering and death, ever unmindful of her own ease if she could only heal broken hearts and soothe the cry of anguish. Such nobility the world will ever recognize, and love to honor.

Many such are found in the homes of our own land. Many a reader can say, “Such was my mother, God bless her!” You have seen her bending over the cradle, pale, gentle, loving as an angel; you have seen her placid and cheerful amidst all the annoyances and wasting cares of domestic life; you have seen her return home in the morning, after watching during the night with a sick neighbor, to toil all day long with fingers which never seem to tire, and with a gentle spirit which even your waywardness could never discompose.

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 in prayer. 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 place for 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

What words of comfort to the mourner! O precious Bible! thou instructor of the ignorant, guide of the erring, consoler of the afflicted, supporter of the dying; thou unfailing friend of all the weary and the heart-crushed; thou only hope of humanity,—thou art indeed God’s best gift to our fallen race.

In the natural world there is infinite variety,—room for the gratification of every diversity of taste. Here rise the craggy mountains, with their eternal glaciers,—their pinnacles, thunder-riven, storm-torn, piercing the skies; there sleeps the placid lake, embowered in groves, fringed with blooming meadows, and upon whose bosom float the graceful many-colored waterfowl undisturbed: here extends the limitless prairie, an ocean of land, embroidered with flowers whose hues Solomon, arrayed in all his glory, could not outvie; there Sahara’s boundless sands in dreary desolation glisten in the sun; and there the Dismal Swamp, which even the foot of the moccasoned Indian cannot penetrate, frowns in eternal gloom,—all subserving some good end, all ministering to the glory of God and the good of his children.

So in the Bible, God’s Word, we find that which is adapted to every variety of taste, every condition of mind, every gradation of intellect and of culture. One page conducts you back to the pastoral simplicity of the world’s infancy: you wander with the patriarchs as they pitch their tents and tend their flocks beneath the sunny skies of the Orient. Another page moves your soul with the sublime denunciations of the prophets, before which denunciations monarchs trembled, and empires crumbled to ruin. You turn the leaf; and the majestic dynasties of the long-buried ages pass before you in sombre procession, with all their vicissitudes of pomp and of death, of revelry and of wailing. You open to another chapter; and your soul is soothed with the penitential sweetness of the Psalms of David, whose pensive strains bring solace to your soul in its hours of deepest sadness. Again your spirit is ennobled by the precepts of Jesus, who spake as never man spake; and your whole being is inspired by the magnificent revelations