ness

a something to be proud of. Let Pilate be a specimen and a wretched one he is. He had clearmindedness enough to be dissatisfied with all the views he knew enough to see through and scorn the squabbles and superstitions of priests and bigots. All well : if from doubt of falsehood he had gone on to a belief in higher truth. But doubt, when it left him doubting - why, the noblest opportunity man ever had that of saving the Saviour-he missed: he became a thing for the people to despise, and after-ages to pity. And that is scepticism. Call you that a manly thing?

!

To believe is to be happy: to doubt is to be wretched, But I will not urge that. Seventy years, and the most fevered brain will be still enough. We will not say much of the wretchedness of doubt. To believe is, to be strong. Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power-only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is worth the doing.

Ispeak to those who have learned to hold cheap the threats wherewith priests and people would terrify irto acquiescence to those who are beyond the appeal of fear, and can only yield, if at all, to higher motives. Young men ! the only manly thing, the only strong thing, is Faith. It is not so far as a man doubts, but so far as he believes, that he can achieve or perfect anything. "All things are possible to him that be lieveth."

XXI.

[Preached on the first day of Public Mourning for the Queen Dowager, 1849. i

THE ISRAELITE'S GRAVE IN A FOREIGN LAND.*

GEN: 1. 24–26. —“ And Joseph 'said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt."

THERE is a moment when a man's life is re-lived on earth, It is in that hour in which the coffin-lid is shut

61 This Sermon was formerly published by the Author in a separate form, and the following Preface to that publication explains so well the circumstances under which all the other Sermons have been preserved, that it has been thought best to reprint the preface here.

ff For the publication of the commonplace observations contained in the following pages, the commonplace excuse may, perhaps, suffice. that printing was the simplest way of multiplying copies for a few friends Who desired them. Perhaps, too, the uncommonness of the occasion may justify the writer in giving to an ephemeral discourse an existence somewhat less transient than the minutes spent in listening to it.

"The Sermon is published as nearly as possible as it was spoken. It was written out concisely for a friend on the day of its delivery, with no intention of publication. Afterwards, it seemed better to leave it in that state, with only a few corrections, and the addition of a few sentences, than to attempt to re-write it after an interval too great to recall what

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down, just before the funeral, when earth has seen the last of him forever. Then the whole life is, as it were, lived over again in the conversation which turns upon the memory of the departed. The history of threescore years and ten is soon recapitulated: not, of course, the innumerable incidents and acts which they contained, but the central, governing principle of the whole. Feverish curiosity sometimes spends itself upon the last hours; and a few correct sentences, implying faith after the orthodox phraseology, would convey to some greater hope than a whole life breath ing the Spirit of Christ, separate from such sentences. But it is not thus the Bible speaks. It tells us very little of the closing scene, but a great deal of the gen eral tenor of a life. In truth, the closing scene is worth very little. The felon, who, up to the last fort night, has shown his impenitence by the plea of not guilty, in the short compass of that fortnight makes a confession, as a matter of course exhibits the externals of penitence, and receives the last Supper. But it would be credulity, indeed, to be easily persuaded that the eternal state of such a one is affected by it. A life of holiness sometimes mysteriously terminates in darkness; but it is not the bitterest cries of forsakenness so often the result of physical exhaustion-nor éven

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had been said. This will account for the abruptness and want of finish which pervades the composition.

The writer takes this opportunity of disowning certain sermons which have been published in his name. They would not have been worth notice, had not the innumerable blunders of thought and expression which they contain been read and accepted by several as his. For thi reason, he feels it due to himself to state that they are published without his sanction, and against his request, and that he is not responsible for either the language or the ideas.'

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blank despair, that shall shake our deep conviction that he whose faith shone brightly through life is now safe in the Everlasting arms. The dying scene' is worth little-little, at least, to us except so far as it is in harmony with the rest of life.

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It is for this reason that the public estimate pronounced upon the departed is generally a fair criterion of worth. There are, of course, exceptional cases: pases in which the sphere of action has been too limited for the fair development of the character, and nothing but the light of the Judgment day can reveal it in its true aspect; cases in which party spirit has defaced a name, and years are wanted to wash away the mask of false color which has concealed the genuine features; cases in which the champion of truth expires amidst the execrations of his contemporaries, and after-ages build his sepulchre. These, however, are exceptions. For the most part, when all is over, general opinion is not far from truth. Misrepresentation and envy have no provocatives left them. What the departed was is tolerably well known in the circle in which he moved. The epitaph may be falsified by the partiality of rela tions; but the broad judgment of society reverses that, rectifies it, and pronounces, with perhaps a rude, but on the whole fair approximation to the truth.

These remarks apply to the history of the man whose final scene is recorded in the text.

>

The verdict

Joseph had

of the Egyptian world was worth much. gone to Egypt, some years before, a foreigner; had lived there in obscurity; had been exposed to calumny j by his quiet, consistent goodness, had risen, step by step, first to respect, then to trust, command, and vene ration; was embalmed after death in the affections, as

well as with the burial rites, of the Egyptians; and his

honored form reposed at last amidst the burial-place of the Pharaohs.

In this respect the text branches into a two-fold division: the life of Joseph, and the death which was in accordance with that life.

I The history of Joseph, as of every man, has two sides its outward circumstances, and its inner life.

"

1. The outward. circumstances were checkered with misfortune. Severed from his home in very early years, sold into slavery, cast into prison, at first grief seemed to have marked him for her own. And this is human life. Part of its lot is misery. There are two inadequate ways of accounting for this mys tery of sorrow. One, originating in a zeal for God's justice, represents it as invariably the chastisement of sin, or, at the least, as correction for fault. But, plainly, it is not always such. Joseph's griefs were the consequences, not of fault, but of rectitude. The integrity which, on some unknown occasion, made it his duty to carry his brethren's" evil report” to their father, was the occasion of his slavery. The purity of his life was the cause of his imprisonment. Fault is only a part of the history of this great matter of sorrow. Another theory, created by zeal for God's love, represents sorrow as the exception, and happi ness as the rule of life. We are made for enjoyment, it is said, and on the whole there is more enjoyment than wretchedness. The common idea of Love being that which identifies it with a simple wish to con fen happiness, no wonder that a feeble attempt is made to vindicate God by a reduction of the apparent