THE CARELESS SINNER AWAKENED.
1.2. It is too supposable a case that this Treatise may come into such hands.--3. 4. Since many, not grossly vicious, fail under that character.--5. 6. A more particular illustration of this case, with an appeal to the reader, whether it be not his own.--7 to 9. Expostulation with such.--10 to 12. More particularly--From acknowledged principles relating to the Nature of Got, his universal presence, agency, and perfection.--13. From a view of personal obligations to him.--14. From the danger Of this neglect, when considered in its aspect on a future state.--15. An appeal to the conscience as already convinced.--16. Transition to the subject of the next chapter. The meditation of a sinner, who, having been long thoughtless, begins to be awakened.
1. SHAMEFULLY and fatally as religion is neglected in the world, yet,
blessed be God, it has some sincere disciples, children of wisdom, by whom even
in this foolish and degenerate age, it "is justified:" (Matt. 9:18) who having,
by Divine grace, been brought to the knowledge of God in Christ, have
faithfully devoted their hearts to him, and, by a natural consequence, are
devoting their lives to his service. Could I be sure this Treatise would fall
into no hands but theirs, my work would be shorter, easier and more pleasant.
2. But among the thousands that neglect
religion, it is more than probable that some of my readers may be included; and
I am so deeply affected with their unhappy ease, that the temper of my heart,
as well as the proper method of my subject, leads me, in the first place, to
address myself to such: to apply to every one of them; and therefore to you, O
reader, whoever you are, who may come under the denomination of a careless
sinner.
3. Be not, I beseech you angry at the name. The
physicians of souls must speak plainly, or they may murder those whom they
should cure I would make no harsh and unreasonable supposition. I would charge
you with nothing more than is absolutely necessary to convince you that you are
the person to whom I speak. I will not, therefore, imagine you to be a profane
and abandoned profligate. I will not suppose that you allow yourself to
blaspheme God, to dishonour his name by customary swearing, or grossly to
violate his Sabbath, or commonly to neglect the solemnities of his public
worship; I will not imagine that you have injured your neighbors, in their
lives, their chastity, or their possessions, either by violence or by fraud; or
that you have scandalously debased the rational nature of man, by that vile
intemperance which transforms us into the worst kind of brutes, or something
beneath them.
4. In opposition to all this, I will suppose that
you believe the existence and providence of God, and the truth of Christianity
as a revelation from him: of which, if you have any doubt, I must desire that
you would immediately seek your satisfaction elsewhere*." I say immediately;
because not to believe it, is in effect to disbelieve it; and will make your
ruin equally certain, though perhaps it may leave it less aggravated than if
contempt and opposition had been added to suspicion and neglect. But supposing
you to be a nominal Christian, and not a deist or a skeptic, I wilt also
suppose your conduct among men to be not only blameless, but amiable; and that
they who know you most intimately, must acknowledge that you are just and
sober, humane and courteous, compassionate and liberal; yet, with all this, you
may "lack that one thing" (Mark 10: 21) on which your eternal happiness
depends.
5. I beseech you, reader, whoever you are, that
you would now look seriously into your own heart, and ask it this one plain
question; Am I truly religious? Is the love of God the governing principle of
my life? Do I walk under the sense of his presence? Do I converse with him from
day to day, in the exercise of prayer and praise? And am I, on the whole,
making his service my business and my delight, regarding him as my master and
my father?
6. It is my present business only to address
myself to the person whose conscience answers in the negative. And I would
address, with equal plainness and equal freedom, to high and low, to rich and
poor: to you, who, as the Scripture with a dreadful propriety expresses it,
"live without God in the world!" (Eph. 2:12) and while in words and forms you
"own God, deny him in your actions," (Tit. 1:16) and behave yourselves in the
main, a few external ceremonies only excepted, just as you would do if you
believed and were sure there is no God. Unhappy creature, whoever you are! your
own heart condemns you immediately! and how much more that "God who is greater
than your heart, and knoweth all things." (I John 3:20) He is in "secret,"
(Matt. 6:6) as well as in and words cannot express the delight with which his
children converse with him alone: but in secret you acknowledge him not: you
neither pray to him, nor praise him in your retirements. Accounts,
correspondences studies, may often bring you into your closet; but if nothing
but devotion were to be transacted there, it would be to you quite an
unfrequented place. And thus you go on from day to day in a continual
forgetfulness of God, and are as thoughtless about religion as if you had long
since demonstrated to yourself that it was a mere dream. If, indeed, you are
sick, you will perhaps cry to God for health in any extreme danger you will
lift up your eyes and voice for deliverance but as for the pardon of sin, and
the other blessings of the Gospel, you are not at all inwardly solicitous about
them; though you profess to believe that the Gospel is divine, and the
blessings of it eternal. All your thoughts, and all your hours are divided
between the business and the amusements of life; and if now and then an awful
providence or a serious sermon or book awakens you, it is but a few days, or it
may be a few hours, and you are the same careless creature you ever were
before. On the whole, you act as if you were resolved to put it to the venture,
and at your own expense to make the experiment, whether the consequences of
neglecting religion be indeed as terrible as its ministers and friends have
represented. Their remonstrances do indeed sometimes force themselves upon you,
as (considering the age and country in which you live), it is hardly possible
entirely to avoid them; but you have, it may be, found out the art of Isaiah's
people, "hearing to hear, and not understand; and seeing to see, and not
perceive your heart is waxed gross, your eyes are closed, and your ears heavy."
(Isa. 6:9,10) Under the very ordinances of worship your thoughts "are at the
ends of the earth." (Prov. 17:24) Every amusement of the imagination is
welcome, if it may but lead away your mind from so insipid and so disagreeable
a subject as religion. And probably the very last time you were in a
worshipping assembly, you managed just as you would have done if you had
thought God knew nothing of your behavior, or as if you did not think it worth
one single care whether he were pleased or displeased with it.
7. Alas! is it then come to this, with all your
belief of God, and providence and Scripture, that religion is not worth a
thought? That it is not worth one hour's serious consideration and reflection,
"what God and Christ are, and what you yourselves are, and what you must
hereafter be?" Where then are your rational faculties? How are they employed,
or rather how are they stupefied and benumbed?
8. The certainty and importance of the things of
which I speak are so evident, from the principles which you yourselves grant,
that one might almost set a child or an idiot to reason upon them. And yet they
are neglected by those who are grown up to understanding; and perhaps some of
them to such refinement of understanding that they would think themselves
greatly injured if they were not to be reckoned among the politer and more
learned pan of mankind.
9. But it is not your neglect, sirs, that can
destroy the being or importance of such things as these. It may indeed destroy
you, but it cannot in the least affect them. Permit me, therefore, having been
my-self awakened, to come to each of you, and say, as the mariners did to Jonah
while asleep in the midst of a much less dangerous storm, "What meanest thou, O
sleeper? Arise and call upon thy God." (Jonah 1:6) Do you doubt as to the
reasonableness or necessity of doing it? "I will demand, and answer me;" (Job
38:3) answer me to your own conscience, as one that must, ere long, render
another kind of account.
10. You own that there is a God, and well you
may, for you cannot open your eyes but you must see the evident proofs of his
being, his presence, and his agency. You behold him around you in every object.
You feel him within you, if I may so speak, in every vein and in every nerve.
You see and you feel not only that he hath formed you with an exquisite wisdom
which no mortal man could ever fully explain or comprehend, but that he is
continually near you, wherever you are, and however you are employed, by day or
by night; "in hint you live, and move, and have your being." (Acts 17:28)
Common sense will tell you that it is not your own wisdom, and power, and
attention that causes your heart to beat and your blood to circulate; that
draws in and sends out that breath of life, that precarious breath of a most
uncertain life, "the is in your nostrils." (Isa. 2:22) These things are done
when you sleep, as well as in those waking moments when you think not of the
circulation of the blood, or of the necessity of breathing, or so much as
recollect that you have a heart or lungs. Now, what is this but the hand of
God, perpetually supporting and actuating those curious machines that he has
made?
11. Nor is this his care limited to you; but if
you look all around you, far as your view can reach, you see it extending
itself on every side: and, oh! how much farther than you can trace it! Reflect
on the light and heat which the sun every where dispenses; on the air which
surrounds all our globe; on the right temperature on which the life of the
whole human race depends, and that of all the inferior creatures which dwell on
the earth. Think on the suitable and plentiful provisions made for man and
beast; the grass, the grain, the variety of fruits, and herbs, and flowers;
every thing that nourishes us, every thing that delights us, and say whether it
does not speak plainly and loudly that our Almighty Maker is near, and that he
is careful or us, and kind to us. And while all these things proclaim his
goodness, do not they also proclaim his power? For what power has any thing
comparable to that which furnishes out those gifts of royal bounty; and which,
unwearied and unchanged, produces continually, from day to day, and from age to
age, such astonishing and magnificent effects over the face of the whole earth,
and through all the regions of heaven?
12. It is then evident that God is present,
present with you at this moment; even God your creator and preserver, God the
creator and preserver of the whole visible and invisible world. And is he not
present as a most observant and attentive being? "He that formed the eye, shall
not he see? He that planted the ear, shall not he hear? He that teaches man
knowledge," that gives him his rational faculties, and pours in upon his
opening mind all the light it receives by them, "shall not he know?" (Psal.
94:9,10) He who sees all the necessities of his creatures so seasonably to
provide for them, shall be not see their actions too; and seeing, shall he not
judge them? Has he given us a sense and discrimination of what is good and
evil, of what is true and false, of what is fair and deformed in temper and con
duct; and has he himself no discernment of these things? Trifle not with your
conscience, which tells you at once that he judges of it, and approves or
condemns as it is decent or indecent, reasonable or flu-reasonable; and that
the judgment which he passes is of infinite importance to all his creatures.
13. And now to apply all this to your own case;
let me seriously ask you, is it a decent and reasonable thing, that this great
and glorious Benefactor should be neglected by his rational creatures--by those
that are capable of attaining to some knowledge of him, and presenting to him
some homage? Is it decent and reasonable that he should be forgotten and
neglected by you? Are you alone, of all the works or his hands, forgotten or
neglected by him? O sinner, thoughtless as you are, you cannot dare to say
that, or even to think it. You need not go back to the he1pless days of your
infancy and childhood to convince you of the contrary. You need not, in order
to this, recollect the remarkable deliverances which perhaps were wrought out
for you many years ago. The repose of the last night, the refreshment and
comfort you have received this day; yea, the mercies you are receiving this
very moment bear witness to him; and yet you regard him not ungrateful creature
that you are! Could you have treated any human benefactor thus? Could you have
borne to neglect a kind parent, or any generous friend, that had but for a few
months acted the part of a parent to you; to have taken no notice of him while
in his presence; to have returned him no thanks; to have had no contrivances to
make some little acknowledgment for all his goodness? Human nature, bad as it
is, is not fallen so low. Nay, the brutal nature is not so low as this. Surely
every domestic animal around you must shame such ingratitude. If you do but for
a few days take a little kind notice of a dog, and feed him with the refuse of
your table, he will wait upon you, and love to be near you; he will be eager to
follow you from place to place, and when, after a little absence you return
home, will try, by a thousand fond, transported motions, to tell you how much
he rejoices to see you again. Nay, brutes far less sagacious and apprehensive
have some sense of our kindness, and express it after their way: as the blessed
God condescends to observe, in this very view in which I mention it, "The" dull
"ox knows his owner, and the" stupid "ass his master's crib." (Isa. 1: 3) What
lamentable degeneracy therefore is it, that you do not know-that you, who have
been numbered among God's professed people, do not and will not consider your
numberless obligations to him.
14. Surely, if you have any ingenuousness of
temper, you must be ashamed and grieved in the review; but if you have not,
give me leave farther to expostulate with you on this head, by setting it in
something of a different light. Can you think your-self safe, while you are
acting a part like this? Do you not in your conscience believe there will be a
future judgment? Do you not believe there is an invisible and eternal world? As
professed Christians, we all believe it; for it is no controverted point, but
displayed in Scripture with so clear an evidence, that, subtle and ingenious as
men are in error, they have riot yet found out a way to evade it. And believing
this, do you not see, that, while you are thus wandering from God, "destruction
and misery are in your way?" (Rom. 3:16) Will this indolence and negligence of
temper be any security to you? Will it guard you from death? Will it excuse you
from judgment? You might much more reasonably expect that shutting your eyes
would be a defence against the rage of a devouring lion; or that looking
another way should secure your body from being pierced by a bullet or a sword;
When God speaks of the extravagant folly of some thoughtless creatures who
would hearken to no admonition now he adds, in a very awful manner, "In the
latter day they shall consider it perfectly." (Jer. 23:20) And is not this
applicable to you? Must you not sooner or later be brought to think of these
things, whether you wilt or not! And in the mean time do you not certainly know
that timely and serious reflection upon them is, through divine grace, the only
way to prevent your ruin!
15. Yes, sinner, I need not multiply words on a
subject like this. Your conscience is already inwardly convinced, though your
pride maybe unwilling to own it. And to prove it, let me ask you one question
more: Would you, upon any terms and considerations whatever, come to a
resolution absolutely to dismiss all farther thought of religion, and all care
about it, from this day and hour, and to abide the consequences of that
neglect? I believe hardly any man living would be bold enough to determine upon
this. I believe most of my readers would be ready to tremble at the thought of
it.
16. But if it be necessary to take these things
into consideration at all, it is necessary to do it quickly; for life itself is
not so very long nor so certain, that a wise man should risk much upon its
continuance. And I hope to convince you when I have another hearing, that it is
necessary to do it immediately, and that next to the madness of resolving you
will not think of religion at all, is that of saying you will think of it
hereafter. In the meantime, pause art the hints which have been already given,
and they will prepare you to receive what is to be added on that head.
The Meditation of a Sinner who was once thoughtless, but begins to be awakened.