THE

UNITED PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE,

FOR APRIL, 1852.

Miscellaneous Communications.

CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO MAN.

SECOND ARTICLE.

In our former communication we directed attention to man's natural craving for direct intercourse with the unseen world,-to the strong desire established by many "infallible proofs " for a revelation from God. Christianity meets this desire, and seeks to gratify it; but so do false religions. It is, therefore, incumbent on us, if we would show that Christianity is suited to man, to demonstrate that its doctrines harmonise with our intellectual and moral constitution,—that they accord with the testimony of consciousness and the facts of experience. We must endeavour to prove to men, that in the Scriptures, as Vinet has expressed it, "The state of their souls is perfectly described, their wants are fully expressed, and the true remedies for their maladies are completely indicated; so that by such means they may acquire a conviction, which, though they may not be able to give an account of it to others, is not the less legitimate, irresistible, and immoveable."

Christianity distinctly recognises the immortality of man, and in doing so is suited to our intellectual and moral nature. There are few questions of fact better established than the universal prevalence of the belief in man's immortality. "The immortality of the soul," says Cicero, "is established by the consent of all nations." It was held more or less generally, and with a greater or less degree of firmness, by the ancient Greeks, and Romans, and Egyptians, and Chaldeans, and Persians, and Indians, and Gauls,—and wherever modern travellers have gone, and have been enabled to ascertain the opinions of the nations with any degree of correctness, it has been found that there are customs among them indicating some notion more or less distinct of a future state. "They possess their spirit-tale," says Dr R. W. Hamilton, "they chaunt the wild hope of future feast with their sires, and perhaps of future triumph over their foes. The clouds compass to their eyes the ghostly array. The mountains girdle the shadowy home. Associate with people the most philosophical and refined,―sit at the banquets of their dialecticians,-follow to the death-scene of their sages,-gaze upon the

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hieroglyphics of their temples,—dig into the riches of their language,—and all will reveal the prevailing power of this belief."

It may be said that the ancient philosophy was moulded by the common poetry. Granting this, we ask, By what was the poetry inspired? Potent as the poet is, he cannot invent opinion or usage; he can but combine forms of sentiment, give pomp to history, and intensity to truth. He expresses what his age carried in its bosom. To use again the words of the profound and eloquent christian philosopher of Switzerland, "he concentrates, in the burning glass of his genius, the rays of truth, which, scattered in the world, were not able to set it on fire." It was the fact that a future state-a Tartarus or an Elysium-was the object of the popular reflection and belief that rendered it especially interesting, as the subject of the sage's speculations, and the poet's song.

There is no doctrine which man is so ready to receive as that of his own immortality. He shrinks from annihilation,—he cannot, and will not, believe that there is no existence after death. The hopes of virtue, and the terrors of guilt, alike attest his immortality. Man stands at the gate of the sepulchre, listening with eagerness if he can discern the sound of life, straining his inquisitive eyes, as through the gloom he sees, or imagines that he sees, the light of life gleaming like a distant star among the passing clouds. The doctrine of immortality is founded in the depths of his soul, and every reason for it, and everything that looks like a reason, is invested with importance. The soul's spiritual nature and noble powers, the moral anomalies of the present state, and the craving for posthumous fame, are appealed to with more or less confidence in support of the doctrine of man's immortality. To reason against this doctrine is felt to be the cruel act of misanthropic ferocity; and while the problem, "to be, or not to be," may suggest itself to speculation as disputable, the desires and anticipations of the human heart answer it in the affirmative.

Now, Christianity fully and distinctly recognises man's immortality. It tells him that he cannot die; that he shall escape the ravages of death and rise out of the ruins of his nature; that there is in him a living, an immortal substance, an imperishable principle which may "smile at the drawn dagger, and defy its point;" that there is in him a soul, which, by the will of Him who formed it, is destined for everlasting conscious activity. "Christianity," as a living writer has said, "draws aside the veil of the unseen, it flings a bridge over the dark waters of the Jordan, it plants a ladder on earth the top of which rises to heaven, it gives us more than a glimpse of ethereal forms, more than a waft of ambrosial airs, more than an echo of angelical symphonies." As man hears of immortality, his heart gives a quick and full response, he starts at the sound as at the voice of a friend whom he had known intimately in childhood, from whom he had been separated, but whose tones of tenderness and power he had never altogether forgotten. In a very special sense, life and immortality have been brought to light by the Gospel. Among the ancient heathen, yea, even among the ancient Jews, the doctrine of the soul's immortality was comparatively but a vague hope, a strong desire, a pleasurable conjecture. By the teaching of Jesus Christ, however, and especially by his resurrection, that doctrine has been made a certainty. Eternity has been revealed to furnish motive and resolution to self-denial and holy activity.

Again, Christianity recognises man's guilt and depravity, and in doing so is suited to his intellectual and moral condition. The doctrines of universal guilt and depravity are what Christianity uniformly assumes, and what

must be believed, before the more peculiar truths of Christianity can be either well understood or cordially received. It is beyond all question true, that the general state of mankind has been anything but happy and pure; anything but what the moral philosophers of all schools admit it ought to be; anything but what from the constitution, capabilities, and aspirations of the human mind might be conceived to be its purpose and destiny. We care not to discuss the metaphysical difficulties connected with the subject of conscience. For our present purpose it is sufficient to regard it as that, be it simple or complex, original or derived, which enables us to distinguish between right and wrong, and which, to the office of judge, adds that of executioner, administering a present retribution according as we follow or thwart its decisions. There is not one without that which enables him, nay, compels him, to discriminate between right and wrong. No tribe has yet been discovered, however degraded and sensualised, in which this faculty could not be awakened. In the Scriptures, as we have said, man's guilt and depravity are assumed in certain passages, in others they are stated in the most unequivocal terms, and in a third class they are established by a train of argument. "The whole world has been brought in guilty before God." "We are estranged from the womb, we go astray as soon as we are born." "We all like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way." "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one." These declarations find an echo in the heart of man; they evoke the spectres of guilt from the hiding places of the soul. When the tables of Moses are held up with the words inscribed on them, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind," and "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," man feels that these precepts correspond with those which the finger of God has inscribed on the fleshly tables of his heart. As his eyes rest on the precepts, his heart accuses him of their violation. When the announcement is made to him that he is a sinner, there is a voice from within which repeats and confirms the statement. He says, "It is true, I know and feel it;" or, if he attempt to deny its truth, conscience places an interdict upon his lips. When the evil of sin is declared, a consciousness of guilt gives emphasis to the statement. The flames of remorse roll along the soul, and reflect, though often in confused and broken forms, the clouds and flames of Sinai. Responsibility is engraven on man's inmost soul; and he feels, and, by alarms which can neither be explained nor got rid of, manifests the feeling, that there is something wrong, that he is not only responsible to some superior being, but that he is guilty; that he has failed in the performance of that which nature and reason point out as his duty. When man is told of everlasting misery, an unpropitious signal flashes across the breast in confirmation of the statement; when he is told of an unquenchable fire which shall devour the guilty, its sparks seem shooting up from the abyss, and the flames of conscience seem kindled by them. What are all the sacrifices of slain beasts, and even of more precious victims-what are all the penances and mortifications that find a place in the religions of men, but just so many exponents of the universal consciousness of guilt? The announcement of a message from God, even before the terms of that message have been declared, is like the hand that traced the mysterious characters upon the wall in the palace of the Babylonish monarch.

Closely connected with a sense of guilt, is the conviction of a future judgment. The doctrine of a general judgment is one of the main doctrines of the christian system. "God hath appointed a day in which He will

judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised him from the dead." "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ." These statements correspond with the presentiments of man's soul. Familiarity with solemn truth does seem indeed, not unfrequently, to deprive it of the power of impression. There is seen often an appalling insensibility, still, we think, it may be safely affirmed, that when the coming judgment, the descending Judge, the great white throne, the book of remembrance, the searching investigation, the complete and final separation between the righteous and the wicked, are spoken of, these fall on the soul as truths the shadows of which have been there before. Men not only feel that they have done wrong, and that they are responsible for the wrong done by them, but they feel, moreover, that to God they must give account. The decisions of conscience seem but the preliminary announcement of God. We have thus sought to show the suitableness of Christianity to man's intellectual and moral constitution, as manifested in his restless desire to obtain some revelation; in his delight in the assurance of immortality; in his deep conviction of his own sinfulness; and in his presentiment of the final judgment. Were we to leave the subject here, it would be essentially defective. It becomes us to show that the doctrine of salvation by Christ is the great power of God; that it is in this we see the special adaptation of Christianity to the condition and circumstances of man. We shall enter on the discussion of this point in our next.

J.

THE YOUNG SAILOR: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

WE often think of, and pity, and pray for sailors. If they are not reconciled to their profession, by that which alone can reconcile them—namely, the fear of God, and the faith of Christ-they are of all men the most miserable. A ship, says Dr Johnson, is just a prison, with the additional chance of being drowned. Then, there is the coarse society which sailors must encounter, and the everlasting monotony of their life extending to their occupation, their food, the sights their eyes see, and the sounds their ears hear. Then, there are the dangers which await them on the shore, and into which, in general, they so passively fall. Then, there are the superstition, and the ignorance, which the trade of a sailor seems to stereotype from one generation to another, and the want of opportunities, intellectual and religious, which it involves. Let us pity those poor prisoners, not only chased before the wind, and persecuted by the inhospitable deep, but debarred from rest and slumber, deprived of the living Gospel, and too often shut up in ships, which are just little hells floating on the waters.

But, thanks be to God, many of those prisoners are prisoners of hope! And we now propose to turn the attention of our readers to the brief and tragic story of one of these-one well-known, and exceedingly dear to us, whose memory we cherish with the fondest affection, and whose premature loss is numbered among the most painful incidents in our existence. Brief, indeed, and tragic the tale; but, perhaps, not void of instruction to all, but especially to the youthful members of the same perilous profession. To them this little sketch is specially and affectionately inscribed.

Samuel G. M. was born in Crieff, Perthshire, in March 1827. His father was a merchant there. His mother was the daughter of a minister of the Gospel in the neighbouring parish, who was connected with the United

149 Secession Church, and whose name, as a preacher and writer, was well known in that region, and far beyond it. Samuel G. M. inherited his name, and displayed, ere he died, not a little of his ardent spirit, and self-devoted piety, and generous warm-hearted disposition. We remember him, when an infant in his mother's arms, as a remarkably interesting babe, with a keen dark eye, and an open and manly physiognomy. When still a boy, he lost his father, and removed, along with his mother and a younger brother, to the village of Comrie. There he gave early promise of those qualities of docility, diligence, and aptness to learn, which characterised his after carcer. He was not, however, a mere scholar. Full of life and fire, he mingled in all the sports of his age, and had few competitors. Indeed, his whole aspect denoted a superabundance of animal life, health, and energy, and seemed silently to prophesy an ardent and adventurous character. He had all along, but particularly at ten or twelve years of age, a most interesting personal appearance. His brow was large, lofty, and towering in the intellectual and moral organs,-his eye was quick, and dark,-a smile played perpetually on the lower part of his face, and thick fair hair, curling naturally, surrounded the whole. He attended at first the parish school of the village; and succeeded in gaining the affection of his school-fellows, as well as in awakening the interest, pride, and ardent hopes of his master. He afterwards spent some time at Dunblane, under the care of the Rev. A. Henderson, now of Canada, who for several years taught a seminary for boys there, with considerable success. To Mr H. he was much attached,

and seemed to have derived benefit from his instructions.

About the years 1837, 1838, and 1840, he occasionally visited us in Dundee. Although neither his character nor constitution was then formed, it was impossible to contemplate him without great interest. Full of the "dew of his youth "-frank-utterly destitute of guile, or malice, or suspicion-buoyant in spirits, moving as it were on springs-and fearless as he was innocent-it was as great a luxury for us to see him as it was for him to live. Here, however, he came first in contact with that treacherous element-the ocean-which was destined indirectly to give him an early grave. It was impossible to keep him, while at Dundee, from the shore. The ships drew him toward them by a strong fascination. Sometimes he might be seen gazing alone at their white sails, as they moved majestically toward the untried perils of the outward sea. Sometimes, in the happy boldness of youth, he would board the vessels lying alongst, and enter into conversation with the masters or crew, who saw the future sailor dawning on his quivering lips and glowing eyes, as they talked to him about the wonders they had seen in their wanderings. Nay, once, he and some other boys sprang into a boat they found idle on the beach, pushed it off, and were actually sailing away, in search of far-off adventures, when they were discovered, and their first voyage brought abruptly to a close. These were forebodings of his fate. But, notwithstanding the decided preference he seems even then to have formed for the seafaring life, he meekly, and even gladly submitted, to the will of his relatives, that he should enter on another profession, that, namely, of an engraver in Leith Walk. The trade might have been fortunately selected,—the master certainly was (for a kinder one, he often told us, could not be conceived), but the place assuredly was not. The sea-the deep green bewitching sea-was still too near. It had but, as it were, breathed on him before; but now every day, every hour almost, its fearful fascination was beside him, and its breath became at last a suction he could not resist. It added, too, to the strength of his desire, that the seafaring life seemed to