By angel fingers touch'd, when the wild stars Night and the dawn, bright day and thoughtful eve, As one vast mystic instrument, are touched By an unseen living hand, and conscious chords The dying hear it; and, as sounds of earth Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls To mingle in this heavenly harmony." IV. THE HUMAN CONSCIENCE IS A PROPHECY OF IMMORTALITY. Conscience is that moral faculty which gives us an instinctive conviction of obligation and duty, and also an instinctive apprehension of a future retribution. Its law is written upon the human heart, and interwoven with the very nature of every moral agent. It is as essential a part of our nature as reason, or judgment, or memory. Its universality is asserted by the apostle Paul, when he says that "when the Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves; which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." Its existence and authority are also acknowledged, in some form or other, by all the race. While the doctrine of our "great immortality" has demanded recognition among all men, whether savage or civilized, the belief of it has ever been intensified by conscience. It speaks in every chamber of the soul with a voice more potent than any pealing thunder. The heathen offerings of gold, and silver, and precious things to their gods, and all their sacrifices of sheep, and oxen, and even of human beings, for the atonement of sin, are so many sad yet eloquent attestations of the prophecy which conscience makes of our immortality. Conscience, as well as every other faculty of our moral and intellectual nature, has become impaired by sin; but still, quickened by that Spirit that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, it speaks to the sinner, not in tones of thunder, pealing from Sinai or from thrones of judgment, but in his inmost soul, and in a voice inaudible to the ear of sense, proclaiming the unvailed realities of a retribution as invincible as it is certain. Take away every external source of illumination; blot out every syllable of the written law; extinguish forever the written revelation from God, and still, through the natural conscience, enlightened as it is by the Holy Ghost, man would receive no faint conviction of his obligation to virtue, and no faint impressions of a future judgment and retribution. The commission of sin, even though no flaming thunderbolt of the Almighty should mark to the eyes of men his displeasure, has its fearful attendants. "A waiting conscience, terrific admonition whispering on his secret ear, prophetic warning pointing him to the dim and vailed shadows of future retribution, and the all-penetrating, all-surrounding idea of an avenging God, are present with him; and the right arm of the felon and the transgressor is lifted up, amidst lightnings of conviction and thunderings of reproach." "Skeptic, whoe'er thou art, tell, if thou knowest, Tell why on unknown evil grief attends, Or joy on secret good? Why conscience acts Of dying sinners, while the good man sleeps GLYNN. Thus, there is the sacred dread of retribution in another life, running through all the web and woof of our present being. We can not escape it. It enters the halls of mirth, mingles in the gay scenes of dissipation, traverses the dark chamber of wickedness, goes down with us through all the lanes of life leading to the grave, and in a dying hour makes broad and distinct its utterances of immortality. V. STILL ANOTHER ARGUMENT MAY BE DRAWN FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF INFIDELITY. These confessions indicate how quenchless is the light of immortality in the human soul. Thomas Paine, after declaring that all "belief of a word of God existing in print, or in writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself," nevertheless confesses to the conviction of a future existence. He says: "I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power which gave me existence is able to continue it in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body, and it appears to me more probable that I shall continue to exist hereafter than that I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence began." Thus, also, a large portion of that class of infidels who have rejected the written revelation from God, have, nevertheless, been unable to uproot from their souls the instinct of immortality. Men may deny God and scoff at a future life-may decree that "there is no God," and that "death is an eternal sleep"-but, after all, down in the depths of their depraved hearts lingers the consciousness that the soul does not die, and that consciousness, though long clogged by evil passions, and buried up beneath the rubbish of false and damning theories, shall yet come forth and assert its undying nature. "E'en at the parting hour, the soul will wake, Nor like a senseless brute its unknown journey take." PERCIVAL. Said the dying Altamont, "My soul is full powerful to reason, full mighty to suffer; and that which thus triumphs within the jaws of mortality is, doubtless, immortal." And then he adds: "Remorse for the past throws my thoughts on the future; worse dread of the future strikes them back upon the past. I turn and turn, and find no ray. Didst thou feel half the mountain that is on me, thou wouldst struggle with the martyr for his stake, and bless heaven for the flame that is not an everlasting flame, that is not an unquenchable fire." Who can believe that a soul wrought up into such intense agony, with all its powers so terribly quickened, and with its dying confessions and dreadful anticipations still upon its lips, shall suddenly drop into non-existence, and cease its consciousness forever? Nay, these very confessions of infidelity, rising up, as they do, to confront and confound all the professions of a life of unbelief, and to anticipate an impending and eternal doom, are but the soul's assertion of its undying and immortal nature. VI. IT NOW ONLY REMAINS FOR US TO VERIFY THESE DEDUCTIONS OF REASON BY THE TEACHINGS OF REVE LATION. We have already seen that a future and eternal life only can satisfy the capacities, aspirations, and wants of the soul, and thus meet the conditions of our being; and now it remains for us to ascertain whether God has given us ground of hope that this future life shall be granted—whether that immortality which only can fill up the capacities and satisfy the longings of the mind shall be given or denied to man. Reason may lead us to hope, but revelation produces faith; reason affords some glimmering expectations of a future state, but revelation lifts up the impending vail, and brings immortality and eternal life to light. It dissipates the dense mists that hang over the valley of the shadow of death, and enables the soul to revel in the anticipations of a bliss which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and which it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive. Let us commune for a moment with the spirits of the illustrious dead-illustrious, not for feats of valor, nor for conquests achieved upon the blood-stained fields of carnage and death, but illustrious for moral excellence, for exalted piety, for ardent and undying faith. Let us inquire, What was their faith and what were their hopes? Hear the response in the triumphant language of the godly yet afflicted man of Uz: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins be consumed within me." (Job xix, 25.) Hear it also in the language of the monarch minstrel: "My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." (Ps. lxxiii, 25, 26.) The same faith and the same expectations characterized the language of the great apostle to the Gentiles: "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." (2 Tim. iv, 6-8.) We are ready to exclaim, Can this be the language of dying men? Yes, it is even so! It is the language of men whose bosoms swelled with the hopes and expectations of immortal life. In them the fruits of faith in the blessed Redeemer had ripened into full and glorious maturity. |