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ON THE VALUE OF LIFE.

(PREACHED ON NEW-YEAR'S DAY.)

JOB iii. 2, 3: "And Job spake and said, Let the day perish, wherein I was born."

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THERE is a worldly habit of viewing this life, and especially of depreciating its value, against which, in this discourse, I wish to contend. It is the view of life which many of the heathens entertained, and which better became them than those who hold the faith of Christians. "When we reflect," says one of the Grecian sages, "on the destiny that awaits man on earth, we ought to bedew his cradle with our tears. Job's contempt of life, so energetically expressed in the chapter from which my text is taken, was of the same character. We may observe, however, that Job's contempt of life consisted not with the views entertained by the children of the ancient dispensation, and was emphatically rebuked, in common with all his impious complaints, in the sequel of that affecting story. The birth of a child among the Hebrews was hailed with joy, and its birthday was made a festival.

But there are times and seasons, events and influences in life, which awaken in many, sentiments similar to those of Job, and which require to be considered.

The sensibility of youth sometimes takes this direction.

It is true,

indeed, that to the youthful mind, life for a while is filled with brightness and hope. It is the promised season of activity and enjoyment, of manly independence, of successful business, or of glorious ambition -the season of noble enterprises, and lofty attainments. There is a time, when the youthful fancy is kindling with the anticipations of an ideal world; when it is thinking of friendship and honour of another sort than those which are commonly found in the world; when its promised mansion is the abode of perfect happiness, and its paths, as they stretch into life, seem to it as the paths that shine brighter and brighter for ever.

But over all these glowing expectations there usually comes, sooner or later, a dark eclipse; and it is in the first shock of disappointed hope, before the season of youth is yet fully past, that we are probably exposed to take the most opposite and disconsolate views of life. It is here that we find real, in opposition to fictitious sentimentalism. Before this great shock to early hope comes, the sentimental character is apt to be affectation, and afterwards it is liable to be misanthropy. But now it is a genuine and ingenuous sorrow, at finding life so different from what it

expected. There is a painful and unwelcome effort to give up many cherished habits of thinking about it. The mind encounters the chilling selfishness of the world, and it feels the miserable insufficiency of the world to satisfy its longings after happiness; and life loses many of the bright hues that had gilded its morning season. Indeed, when we take into account the unwonted and multiplied cares of this period, the want of that familiarity and habit which renders the ways and manners of life easy, the difficulties and embarrassments that beset the youthful adventurer, the anxiety about establishing a character, and taking a place in the world, and above all, perhaps, the want of selfdiscipline; when we take all this into the account, to say nothing of the freshness of disappointment, we may well doubt whether the period of entrance into life is the happiest, though it is commonly looked upon as such. It is not, perhaps, till men proceed farther in the way, that they are prepared, either rightly to estimate, or fully to enjoy it. And it is worthy of notice, in this connection, that those diseases which spring from mental anxiety, are accounted by physicians to be the most prevalent between the ages of twenty and forty.

Manhood arrives at a conclusion unfavourable to life, by a different process. It is not the limited view occasioned by disappointment that brings it to think poorly of life, but it assumes to hold the larger view taken by experience and reflection. It professes to have proved this life, and found it little worth. It has deliberately made up its mind, that life is far more miserable than happy. Its employments, it finds, are tedious, and its schemes are baffled. Its friendships are broken, or its friends are dead. Its pleasures pall, and its honours fade. Its paths are beaten, and familiar, and dull. It has grasped the good of life; and everything grasped loses half of its charm; in the hand of possession everything is shrivelled and sunk to insignificance. Is this manhood, then, sad or sentimental? No; farthest possible from it. Sentiment, it holds to be ridiculous; sadness, absurd. It smiles in recklessness. It is merry in despite. It sports away a life not worth a nobler thought, or else it wears away a life not worth a nobler aim, than to get tolerably through it. This is a worldly manhood; and no wonder that its estimate of the value of existence is low and earthly.

Poetry has often ministered to a state of mind, loftier indeed, but of a like complexion. "Life," says the Grecian Pindar, "is the dream of a shadow."

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What," says the melancholy Kirke White

"What is this passing life?

A peevish April day,

A little sun, a little rain,

And then night sweeps along the plain,

And all things fade away."

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The melancholy of Byron is of a darker complexion; one might anticipate, indeed, that his misanthropy as well as gloom would repel every reader; and yet a critic has observed that this is the very quality which has caught and held the ear of the sympathizing world. If the world does sympathize with it, it is time that the Christian preacher should raise his voice against it. One may justly feel, indeed, for the sufferings as well as perversions of that extraordinary mind; but its

scepticism and scorn must not be suffered to fling their shadow across the world without rebuke or remonstrance. Its sufferings, indeed, are a striking proof, which the Christian teacher might well adduce, of the tendency of earthly passion and unbelief to darken all the way of human life.

The pulpit, also, I must allow, has fallen under the charge of leaning to the dark side of things. It may be said, perhaps, that if its instructions are to have any bias, it is expedient that it should lean to the dark side. But error or mistake is not to be vindicated by its expediency, or its power to affect the mind. And its expediency, in fact, if not its power, in this case, is to be doubted. Men of reflection and discernment are, and ought to be, dissatisfied with disproportionate and extravagant statements, made with a view to support the claims of an ascetic piety or a cynical morality. And one mistake, the preacher may find is, to the hearer, an intrenchment, strong against an hundred of his arguments.

It is true, also, that religious men in general have been accustomed to talk gloomily of the present state. I do not mean such religious men as the wise and holy saints of old. Let the rejoicing apostles, rejoicing in the midst of the greatest calamities; let the mild cheerfulness of their Master, stand as monuments against the perversions of later times. It has strangely come to be thought a mark of great piety towards God, to disparage, if not to despise, the state which he has ordained for us; and the claims of this world have been absurdly set up, not in comparison only, but in competition, with the claims of another; as if both were not parts of one system; as if a man could not make the best of this world and of another at the same time; as if we should learn to think better of other works and dispensations of God, by thinking meanly of these. Jesus and his apostles did not teach ust to contemn our present condition. They taught that every creature and every appointment of God is good, and to be received thankfully. They did not look upon life as so much time lost; they did not regard its employments as trifles unworthy of immortal beings; they did not tell their followers to fold their arms as if in disdain of their state and species; but it is evident that they looked soberly and cheerfully upon the world, as the theatre of worthy action, of exalted usefulness, and of rational and innocent enjoyment.

But I am considering the disparaging views of life; and against these views, whether sentimental, worldly, poetical, or religious, I must contend. I firmly maintain, that, with all its evils, life is a blessing. There is a presumptive argument for this of the greatest strength. To deny that life is a blessing, is to destroy the very basis of all religion, natural, and revealed; and the argument I am engaged upon, therefore, well deserves attention: for the very foundation of all religion is laid in the belief that God is good. But if life is an evil and a curse, there can be no such belief rationally entertained. The Scriptures do not prove, nor pretend to prove, that God is good. They assume that truth as already certain. But what makes it certain? Where does, or can the proof come from? Obviously from this world, and nowhere else. Nowhere else can our knowledge extend, to gather proof. Nay more, I say, the proof must come from this life and from nothing else. For it avails not if life itself is doomed to be unhappy-it avails not

to the argument to say that this world is fair and glorious. It avails not to say that this outward frame of things, this vast habitation of life, is beautiful. The architecture of an infirmary may be beautiful, and the towers of a prison may be built on the grandest scale of architectural magnificence; but it would little avail the victims of sickness or of bondage. And so if this life is a doomed life-doomed by its very condition to sufferings far greater than its pleasures; if it is a curse, and not a blessing; if sighs and groans must rise from it more frequent and loud than voices of joy and gladness, it will avail but little that heaven spreads its majestic dome over our misery; that the mountain walls which echo our griefs are clothed with grandeur and might; or that the earth which bears the burthen of our woes is paved with granite and marble, or covered with verdure and beauty.

Let him, then, who says that this life is not a blessing; let him who levels his satire at humanity and human existence as mean and contemptible; let him who with the philosophic pride of a Voltaire or a Gibbon looks upon this world as the habitation of a miserable race, fit only for mockery and scorn, or who with the religious melancholy of Thomas a Kempis or of Brainard, overshadows this world with the gloom of his imagination till it seems a dungeon or a prison, which has no blessing to offer but escape from it, let all such consider that they are extinguishing the primal light of faith, and hope, and happiness. If life is not a blessing, if the world is not a goodly world, if residence in it is not a favoured condition, then religion has lost its basis, truth its foundation, in the goodness of God; then it matters not what else is true or not true; speculation is vain and faith is vain; and all that pertains to man's highest being is whelmed in the ruins of misanthropy, melancholy, and despair.

The argument in this view is well deserving of attention. Considered as a merely speculative point, it is nevertheless one on which everything hangs. And this indeed is the consideration which I have been stating -that the whole superstructure of religious truth is based upon this foundation truth, that life is a blessing.

And that this is not a mere assumption, I infer in the next place from experience. And there are two points in this experience to be noticed. First, the love of life proves that it is a blessing. If it is not, why are men so attached to it? Will it be said, that it is “the dread of something after death" that binds man to life? But make the case a fair one for the argument: say, for instance, that the souls of men sleep, after death, till the resurrection; and would not almost every man rather live on, during the intermediate space, than sink to that temporary oblivion?

But to refer, in the next place, to a consideration still plainer and less embarrassed; why are we so attached to our local situation in life, to our home, to the spot that gave us birth, or to any place, no matter how unsightly or barren,-though it were the rudest mountain or rock,-on which the history of years has been written? Will it be said that it is habit which endears our residence? But what kind of habit? A habit of being miserable? The question needs no reply. Will you refer me to the pathetic story of the aged prisoner of the Bastile, who, on being released and coming forth into the world, desired to return to his prison; and argue from this, that a man may learn to love even the

glooms of a dungeon, provided they become habitual? But why did that aged prisoner desire to return? It was not because he loved the cold shadow of his prison-walls, but it was, as the story informs us, because his friends were gone from the earth; it was because no living creature knew him, that the world was darker to him than the gloomy dungeons of the Bastile. It shows how dear are the ties of kindred and society. It shows how strong and how sweet are those social affections which we never appreciate till we are cut off from their joys; which glide from heart to heart as the sunbeams pass unobserved in the daylight of prosperity; but if a ray of that social kindness visits the prison of our sickness and affliction, it comes to us like a beam of heaven. And though we had worn out a life in confinement, we go back again to meet that beam of heaven, the smile of society; and if we do not find it, we had rather return to the silent walls that know us, than to dwell in a world that knows us not.

But after all, and as a matter of fact, how many miseries, it may be said, are bound up with this life, too deeply interwoven with it, and too keenly felt, to allow it to be called a favoured and happy life! Besides evils of common occurrence and account, besides sickness and pain and poverty, besides disappointment and bereavement and sorrow, how many evils are there that are not embraced in the common estimate; evils that are secret and silent, that dwell deep in the recesses of life, that do not come forth to draw the public gaze or to awaken the public sympathy! How many are there who never tell their grief-how many who spread a fair and smiling exterior over an aching heart!"

Alas! it is but too easy to make out a strong statement: and yet the very strength of the statement, the strong feeling, at least, with which it is made, disproves the cynical argument. The truth is, and it is obvious, that misery makes a greater impression upon us than happiness. Why? Because misery is not the habit of our minds. It is a strange and unwonted guest, and we are more conscious of its presence. Happiness-not to speak now of any very high quality or entirely satisfying state of mind, but only of a general easiness, cheerfulness, and comfort-happiness, I say, dwells with us, and we forget it: it does not excite us; it does not disturb the order and course of our thoughts. All our impressions about affliction, on the other hand, show that it is more rare, and at the same time more regarded. It creates a sensation and stir in the world. When death enters among us, it spreads a groan through our dwellings; it clothes them with unwonted and sympathizing grief. Thus, afflictions are like epochs in life. remember them as we do the storm and earthquake, because they are out of the common course of things. They stand like disastrous events in a table of chronology, recorded because they are extraordinary; and with whole periods of prosperity between. Thus do we mark out and signalize the times of calamity; but how many happy days passunnoted periods in the table of life's chronology-unrecorded either in the book of memory or in the scanty annals of our thanksgiving? How many happy months are swept beneath the silent wing of time, and leave no name nor record in our hearts! How little are we able, much as we may be disposed, to call up from the dim remembrances of the year that is just ended, the peaceful moments, the easy sensations, the

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