To Make the Most of it.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2942, 20 July 1878, Page 4

To Make the Most of it.

The ascetic and depreciating view of life, inculcated by ordinary Christianity, appears to be erroneous, both in its form and in its foundation. How much of it belongs to .Christ, how much to the Apostles, and how much to the accretion of a subsequent age, is not easy to determine. It appears io the Epistles as well as in the Gospels, and in the hands of preachers of the present day it has reached a point at which it is unquestionbly unsound, noxious, and insincere. In Christ this asceticism assumes a mild and moderate form; modified by exquisite judgment and general sympathies, and dignified by the conviction that to men, who had so arduous and perilous a work before them as that to which he, and his disciples were pledged, the interests, the affections, the enjoyments of this life must needs be of very secondary moment. With him it is confined almost entirely to urging his hearers not to sacrifice their duties (and by consequence their rewards) to earthly and passing pleasures, and to teaching them to seek consolation under present privations in the ■ prospect of future blessedness. v"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world'and lose his own soul ? "

That the Apostles, called <o fight against principalities and powers, obliged to hold life and all its affections cheap, because the course of action in which they were engaged perilled these at every step, finding the great obstacle to their success in the tenacity with which their hearers clung to those old occupations and enjoyments, which embracing the new faith would oblige them to forswear—impressed, moreover, with the solemn and tremendous conviction that the world was falling to pieces, and that their own days, and their own vision would witness the final catastrophe of nature — that the Apostles should regard with unloving eyes that world of which their hold was bo precarious, and their tenure so short, and should look with amazement and indignation upon men who would cling to a doomed and perishing habitation, instead of gladly sacrificing everything to obtain a footing in the new Kingdom was natural, and, granting the premises, rational and wise.

But for the Divines in this day, when the profession of Christianity is attended with no peril, when its practice even demands no sacrifice, save that preference of duty to enjoyment which is the first law of cultivated humanity, to repeat the language, profess the. feelings, inculcate the notions of men who lived in daily dread of such awful martyrdom, and under the excitement of such a mighty misconception ; to cry down this world, with its profound beauty, its thrilling interests, its glorious works, its noble and holy affections; to exhort their hearers Sunday after Sunday, to detach their hearts from the earthly life as inane, fleeting, and unworthy, and fix it upon Heaven, as the only sphere deserving of the love of the loving, or.the meditation of the wise—appears to us, we confess, frightful insincerity, the enactment of a wicked and gigantic lie. The exhortation is delivered and listened to -as a

thing of course; and an hour afterwards the preacher, who has usurped and profaned the language of an Apostle who wrote with the faggot and the cross full in view, is sitting comfortably with nis hearer over his claret; they are fondling the children, discussing public affairs or private'plans in life with passionate interest, and yet can look each other in the face without a smile or a blush for the sad and meaningless farce they have been acting. . Yet the closing of our connection with this earthly sceDe is as certain and proba-/ bly as near to us as it waß to the Apostles. Death is as close to us as the end of the world was te> them. It is not, therefore, their misconception on this point which makes their view of life unsound and insincere when adopted by us. We believe it to be erroneous in itself, and to proceed upon false conceptions of our relation to time and to futurity. The doctrine, as ordinarily set forth, that this world is merely.one of probation and preparation, we entirely disbelieve. The idea of regarding it as merely a portal to another is simply an attempt to solve the enigma of life ; a theory to explain the sufferings of man, and to facilitate the endurance of them. We, on the contrary, think that everything tends to prove that this life is, not perhaps, nor probably, our only sphere, but still an integral one, and the one with which we are meant to be concerned. The present is our scene of action —the future is for speculation, and for trust. We firmly believe that man was sent upon earth to live in it, to enjoy it, to study it, to love it, to embellish it— to make the most of it. It should be to him a house, not* a tent—a home, not a school only. If, when this house and this home are taken from him, Providence in its wisdom and its bounty provides him with another, let him be deeply grateful for the gift—let him transfer to that future, when it shall have become his present, his exertions, his researches and his love; but let him rest assured that he is sent into this world, not to be constantly hankering after, dreaming of, preparing for, another which may be in store for him—but to do his duty^and to fulfil his destiny on earth—to do all in his power to improve it, to render it a scene of elevated happiness to himself, to those around him, to tbose who are to come after him. So will he avoid those tormenting contests with nature; those struggles to suppress affections which Godjias implanted, sanc'ioned, and endowed with irresistible supremacy; those agonies of remorse when he finds that God is too strong for him, which now embitter the lives of so many earnest and sincero souls. So will he. best prepare for'that future which, we hope for ; so will he best have occupied the present. This love of the world in which our lot is cast; this engrossment with the interests and affections of earth, has in'it nothing necessarily low or sensual. It is wholly apart from love of wealth, of fame, of ease, of splendour, of power, of what is commonly called worldliness. It is the love of earth as the garden on-which the Creator has lavished such miracles of beftuty, as the habitation of humanity, the dwelling place of the wise, the good, the active, the loving, and the loved. Do we mean then that our future prospects have no claim on our attention here? Far from it. 'i he fate of the soul alter it leaves 1 hose conditions under which alono we have any cognizance of its existence, the poseibilily of continued and eternal being, and the nature of the scenes in which that being will be developed, must always form topics of profoundest interest, jhose whose conceptions are lofty, whoße

imagination is vivid and daring—those to whom life has been a sceue of incessant failure—those who, harrassed and toil' worn, sink under the burden of their threescore years—those who, having seen friend, parent, child, wife necessarily removed, find the balance- of attraction gradually inclining in favor of another life—all such will cling to these lofty speculations with a tenacity of interest which needs no injunction, and will listen to no prohibition. All we wish to suggest is that they should be regarded rather as a consoling privilege, than as an inculcated duty.—W. E.Gkeg.