Revelation considers mankind in their highest capacity, as the rational and accountable subjects of God, and as capable both of present and future happiness or misery, according to their behaviour. Its chief, if not its sole design, is to give us those views and impressions of our nature, of our state, of the perfections, the counsels, the laws, and the government of God, which, under the influence of providence, are the immediate and infallible means of the purity, of the comfort, and of the moral order, rectitude, and excellence of our immortal souls. As corrupted and disordered, we are incapable of true happiness, till purified and restored to order. As guilty and mortal creatures, we can have no true consolation without the hopes of pardon in a future and seperate state of existence.
As surrounded with dangers, and obnoxious to every dismal apprehension, we can possess no solid, or permanent content, but in the sincere and well grounded convictions of that gracious and righteous administration so minutely and explicitly delineated in the scriptures. It is evident, therefore, that the principal excellence and utility of revealed truths upon the sanctification and consolation of our hearts. They tally exactly with the present circumstances of mankind, and are admirably adapted to cure every disease, every disorder of the human mind, to beget, to cherish, and confirm every pure, every virtuous, every pious disposition.
MANKIND are certainly at present in a state of the deepest corruption and depravity, and at the same time apt to continue strangely insensible of the misery and danger to which, under the government of infinite wisdom, it necessarily renders them. Nothing can be conceived more fit to rouse them from their lethargy, and to awaken them to a just sense of their condition, than a messenger from Heaven, clothed with divine authority, setting before them the intrinsic baseness, malignity, and wretchedness of vice, together with the certain, the dreadful, the eternal consequences of continuing in it.
COULD we enter upon a particular view of all those maladies and disorders which infest and destroy the souls of men, it were easy to shew, that a steadfast belief of religion is, in truth, the most natural and the best antidote or remedy for each of them. It is obvious, or least, that the clear and full manifestation, which the gospel has given of the character of God, and the laws of his moral government, and of the terms of salvation through faith in the religion of his son, are all finely calculated to root out the principles of superstition, and all false notions, destructive to the virtue and happiness of mankind, and to plant in their room whatever has a natural and direct tendency to promote our virtue, our perfection, our felicity.
(2) CLEOMENES, king of Sparta, when suffering under misfortune, was advised to kill himself by Tharyceon.
"Thinkest thou, wicked man, (said he) to shew thy fortitude by rushing upon death, an expedient always at hand, the dastardly resource of the basest minds? Better than we, by the fortune of arms, or overpowered by numbers, have left the field of battle to their enemies; but he who, to avoid pain, or calamity, or censures of men, gives up the contest, we are to seek death, that death ought to be in action. It is base to live or die only for ourselves. All we gain by suicide is to get our own reputation, or doing the least service to our country. In hopes, then, we may yet be of some use to others, both methinks are bound to preserve life as long as we can. Whenever these hopes shall have altogether abandoned us, death, if sought for, will readily be found.
(3) OF all the refines cobwebs, to which sophistry has given birth, this seems at once the most elaborate and the most flimsy. It seems one of the first and most indisputable maxims in all found reasoning, that no ideas whatever should have a place in the premises, which do not communicate a sensible energy to the conclusion. But where is the connection between the beginning and end of this wire-drawn argument.
What have the various beautiful facts, thus elegantly stated, to do with a man's taking away his own life?
Though the greatest philosopher be of no more consequence to the general system of things than an oyster, and though the life of the one were, in every respect, as perfectly insignificant as that of the other, still the meanest of mankind is not without importance in his own eyes.
And where is he who is guided uniformly, in all his actions, more by a sense of his relation to the universe at large, than by the value he retains for himself, or the deference he has to his own opinion.
NO deduction, however plausible, can produce conviction in any rational mind, which originates in a supposition grossly absurd. Is it possible to conceive the author of nature capable of authenticating a deed, which ultimately terminates in the total annihilation of the system? By which of the creatures beneath us is the first law of their being thus daringly violated? And if suicide be eligible to man, under any possible misfortune or distress, why not to them? Are not they also subject to the various miseries which arise from wayward accidents and hostile elements? Why, therefore, open a door for our escape from those evils of which others have their share, to whom, however, it must remain for ever shut? {45}
IN truth, the existence of all animals depends entirely on their inviolable attachment to self-preservation. Their attention to all is accordingly the obvious and common condition of all their natures. By this great and operative principle nature has chiefly consulted her own safety. Our philosopher's notions are so extremely hostile to her most essential institutions, that she could not possibly survive a general conviction of them. And, in spite of all the sophistry he is master of, the question here will eternally recur, whether the wisdom of nature, or the philosophy of our author, deserves the preference.
