its highest possible point in this world, he can easily be made to die, without waiting for the ordinary operation of merely natural laws. We live by influx from God through the heavens. And it is only necessary to cut off that influx, or for the attendant spirits to withdraw a certain distance from the man, and leave him more fully to himself, and he may sicken and die at any time, pining away for the want of that vitality. This may account for many sudden and mysterious deaths, and for many forms of misunderstood diseases. Evil spirits also, with their poisonous and fatal influx, may at any time approach the man who is in evils, being permitted by an all-seeing God. Thus it is, from all these causes, that death walks round the world. And finally, it is to be observed, that if man had lived in true order, and not fallen into sin, he would never have died in infancy, nor prematurely. He would have lived without disease, and have attained a ripe old age; and then, when the body could no longer minister to the internal man, he would have migrated easily and without pain, into the spiritual world. But now it is not so. And since sin has entered into the world, and this kind of death by sin, it is provided that our life. be vigilantly guarded and watched; and from the moment of birth, to the point of great decision in every man's destiny, and to the hour of his departure, it is arranged by the Lord with the utmost precision, that we shall come and go under His allmerciful care. And thus it is that there is "a time to die." The common sense of the world has always recognized it, in that it declares that no one goes till his time has come. And may God in mercy grant that we may live a good and useful life, that when our summons comes for the great departure, we may go, "Not like the quarry slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach the grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." CHAPTER XXV. TRUST IN THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE: ITS NATURE AND EFFECTS. "The more thou puttest in the Lord thy trust, When thou canst say, O Lord, thy will be done, To learn from whence the feeble heart hath might." WE have not written the foregoing chapters without a definite and practical purpose. Our object has been to scatter doubts, to beget a true and rational faith, or confirm and extend it where it is begotten, and to show how reason and revelation, faith and philosophy, unite and harmonize in the well-instructed soul. Thus we have striven to elevate men's minds above the visible and perishing, the unsatisfying and seemingly confused, and fix them rejoicingly in the Everlasting Good:-to bid despair forsake the soul, and sin retire, and a cheerful, hopeful trust and sweet piety take up its abode in the mind. How well or successfully we have done this, must be left to every reader to decide for himself. We do not deem our work by any means perfect, nor even to possess that completeness and finish which we had hoped, in the outset, to have been able to bestow upon it. We honestly confess we have fallen far short of our beloved ideal. But we must crave the privilege of adding one more chapter, and pray heaven to aid us in the writing. If men will not trust in the Divine Providence, it is in vain for them to know it. We have, therefore, one last word-trust, trust, TRUST. To rely with humble and unshaken confidence on such a Providence, is, perhaps, the highest privilege of human beings; for it is attended with an inward peace, and a serene, undisturbed happiness, through all life. But in order to this, something more than mere faith is necessary: "Trust in the Lord and do good," is the brief and divine announcement; and it must be at once perceived that the most unremitting activity of goodness is alone consistent with the most perfect trust. In fact, there can be no true trust which is not founded in good, and which is not in some way—either mentally or bodily, or both constantly active. The Lord is Good itself, and thence Truth itself; and when a man is engaged in this, he is, in fact, working with the Lord, and the Lord with him, to accomplish every purpose of the Divine Wisdom, to lighten every difficulty, and to bring to pass every rational desire of the heart. But this is a matter not attended to and thought of as it should be; nay, it is an error quite prominent, frequently, among those who have the most enlarged views of the Divine Providence, and which springs, perhaps, from a remnant of the old principle of faith alone. A man may be in faith alone with the truth, as well as in falsity. There is no good reason why it should be so; though, undoubtedly, from avoiding one error, they have sometimes lapsed into the opposite extreme. From the manifest folly and uneasiness of men who have hurried and blustered about as though the business of the universe depended upon them, and who, in a state of self-trust, could hardly wait for the slow and orderly movements of Providence, — and, indeed, who seem to have no worthy views of Providence at all, they, in their larger and more spiritual views, have lapsed into a dignified quiet: not only quiet, which, in its true and more appropriate meaning, is a state of harmonious action, so harmonious, and so perfectly at one with the divine everlasting movement, as not to be felt at all as an exertion; but they have settled into what has not inappropriately been called a "masterly inactivity"- frequently into a do-nothing state; and thus this great fact and faith of a divine and all-embracing Providence has been recognized too exclusively as a fact and faith; it has not been ultimated, as every thing good and true in principle should be, into works, which are the outermost and practical plane of this tangible, every-day existence. Next in enormity to acting from self-trust and self-dependence, is not acting at all; and though this latter state cannot come entirely to exist, for the soul is inmostly and constitutionally active, yet we must all confess to a great liability to negligence and sloth; and where nothing good is done, there is a strong proclivity, and, indeed, a way open for influx, to evil. "Idleness is the devil's pillow, or workshop." "Man was created for uses. While, therefore, he is in any study and business, or in any useful occupation, then his mind is limited and circumscribed as by a circle, within which it is successively co-arranged into a form truly human; from which form, as from a house, he sees various lusts out of himself, and from soundness of reason within, exterminates them. The contrary happens to those who give themselves up to sloth and idleness: the mind of these is unlimited and undetermined, and thence man admits into it every thing vain and ludicrous that flows in from the world and the body, which leads to a love of them. Hence other loves, and especially conjugial love, is cast out into exile. In consequence of sloth and ease, the mind grows stupid and the body torpid, and the whole man becomes insensible to every vital love, especially to conjugial love, from which, as from a fountain, issue all the activities and alacrities of life." C. L. 249. In teaching the lesson of Providence, it has been fitly observed, "the Lord says-Behold the fowls of the air; they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.' True it is, that God provideth food for them, but they take the pains to seek it out, and to gather it, and provide for their little families; and by being examples of industry in their way, teach us that Providence will do nothing for the sluggard." "Trust in the Lord and do good: so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." It is not temporal and earthly subsistence which is here primarily referred to, but heavenly and eternal. Both are included, and by trusting in the Lord and doing good, is meant that true and genuine trust which consists in the activity of regenerated affections. To have this is to be almost constantly at work doing something. But are there no moments of rest -no cessation from labor? Here, indeed, we are brought to another consideration concerning the mind which relies upon the Divine Providence. There are times, evidently, when the more active and specific duties of life cannot be at all followed, but where both rest and recreation are necessary. But rest itself is not inaction, death-likeness, but, generally speaking, change from one thing to another. There is indeed such a thing as absolute rest; that is, cessation from all bodily action, when the soul needs to recuperate itself by Divine Influx, and, something as in sleep, to repair its wasted energies in the utmost silence and stillness, preparatory for new and more vigorous action. And such periods, we are assured, exist even in the spiritual world. But generally speaking, rest is only change, or the state brought about by change, from one thing to another. This brings into exercise a new set of faculties and powers, allows the former to rest, and so varies the circulation of divine influx in the soul, that what before produced fatigue, now gives pleasure and excitement. But the truth is, were society in its true order-were the church and world what they ought to be, and what they are destined one day to become, we should not pursue one thing till we get fatigued with it, but change before that condition is induced. Thus, it Rest, then, is change. No man is so unhappy as when he is doing nothing, and has nothing to do. The reason is, the |