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قراءة كتاب The Duty of a Christian People under Divine Visitations
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The Duty of a Christian People under Divine Visitations
portion of that time which has been spent in sin, folly, or the acquisition of what will not profit in a dying hour! But is the prayer for mercy, extorted by fear and suffering, never heard; is the tardy repentance never accepted? On the contrary, we believe the prayer of humble and contrite guilt to be never rejected: but, be it remembered, at the same time, that repentance is the gift of God, and that those who long trifle with their day of grace, and by silencing the admonitions of conscience, resist the Spirit, may be visited with the fearful punishment of judicial blindness and final impenitence. “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded: but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity, and will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would none of my counsel, they despised all my reproof.” [26]
From this fearful denunciation of Divine wrath upon obstinate and hardened disobedience, what an awful lesson may be learnt, under the present circumstances of this country. How descriptive are many of the terms employed of that fatal pestilence which has broken out in the land! in the suddenness of the seizure, it resembles “the whirlwind;” by its destructiveness, it causes “desolation;” and from the intensity of the sufferings which it produces, arise “distress and anguish.” God grant that the threatened vengeance be not equally verified;—“Then shall they call upon me, but i will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.” Oh! let not any individual risk incurring such a fearful doom by delaying his repentance! The Lord now calls every one with a voice that all must hear; He has “bared an arm,” which all must see; let not any longer refuse, let not any longer disregard, lest they should fill up the measure of their iniquity, and be swept away by the blast of Divine displeasure! Let not any trust to that, at all times presumptuous, if not always fallacious, hope, a death-bed repentance. That man, whose existence hangs upon a thread, which a moment may suffice to snap, should defer his preparation for death and judgment, is such an act of madness, that nothing but a knowledge of its certainty could make a religious mind credit the fact. What! risk an eternity of joy or misery on the chances of a moment! for beyond the present moment, man possesses no security of the continuance of life. And the very presumption which leads him to calculate upon long years to come may call forth that awful sentence,—“Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.” But if the postponement of turning and calling upon God be, under ordinary circumstances, full of presumption and danger, what is it now in times of pestilence? From the many instances of mortality which encompass us on every side, “there comes a voice, which solemn sounding bids the world prepare.” The judgments of the Almighty,—to those who are living in forgetfulness of Him, and disobedience to His commands, but have not entirely thrown off His service,—speak the language addressed to Jonah, “What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, and call upon thy God.” [28a] But to those who refuse to turn, who “harden their necks against the reproof, and will have none of the counsel of God;” they resemble the characters of flame upon the walls of the palace of Belshazzar, which announced the terrible decree,—“Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.” [28b]
The Christian writer, judging from the experience of the past, cannot close his eyes to the sad truth, that there are some whom mercy softens not, whom threatening warns not, whom danger alarms not. Who amidst manifestations of Divine wrath, display hardened unconcern or desperate wickedness. What a striking proof have we here of the effects of sin in hardening the heart, and deadening the conscience. But let not any imagine that such men will view the approach of the fatal malady without alarm. The bodily anguish will probably supply no parallel to the mental terror, when they find themselves clutched, as it were, in the grasp of the mortal disease which is destroying them. And in the ordinarily brief interval between seizure and that death, which so often ensues, if conscience resume her power, how terrible must be the remorse, how unutterable the anguish of the affrighted soul, which sees death, death eternal in view, and yet cannot pray: or if the cry for pardon and help to their long-forgotten God, burst from the quivering lip, it is the bitter cry of almost despairing terror. Sad as are many of the scenes which human life presents in its passage from the cradle to the tomb; and harrowing to the feelings of beholders as is the sight of corporeal anguish; how immeasurably do other scenes of human suffering fall short of the union of bodily and mental agony, often witnessed on the death-bed of terrified guilt! but still, to the religious mind, there are two death-beds still more fearful, as being more hopeless; and they are, when desperate wickedness, at its last hour, evinces hardened indifference or blasphemous despair; when no prayer is offered, or when curses are mingled with the prayer.
May the fear of such death-beds act, through the grace of God, as a salutary warning to those who are living in sin, and neglecting to improve the call to repentance sent in mercy: and let their thoughts extend beyond the present life, and draw further instruction from the awful truth—that whilst death terminates to impenitent guilt its present sufferings, it commences others far more terrible.
Were it permitted to a living man to pass the portals of the dark prison-house of disembodied spirits, and witness the punishments of the condemned,—the unceasing gnawing of the undying worm, the unremitting burning of the unquenched fire;—what words could express the joy and thankfulness of that man, on returning to the land of the living and the place of hope! Would he lose a moment in fleeing to the cross of Christ, for deliverance from sin, and refuge from the wrath to come? Would he still defer seeking for “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ?” [30] The terrible realities he had witnessed of that state of untried being on which the soul enters at death, would