29. The Equal Dealings of Providence Demonstrated with Regard
to the Happy and the Miserable Here Below-That from the Nature of
Pleasure and Pain, the Wretched Must Be Repaid the Balance of Their
Sufferings in the Life Hereafter,
"My friends, my children, and fellow-sufferers, when I reflect on
the distribution of good and evil here below, I find that much has been
given man to enjoy, yet still more to suffer. Though we should examine
the whole world, we shall not find one man so happy as to have nothing
left to wish for; but we daily see thousands who by suicide show us they
have nothing left to hope. In this life, then, it appears that we cannot be
entirely blessed; but yet we may be completely 'miserable.
"Why man should thus feel pain, why our wretchedness should
be requisite in the formation of universal felicity; why, when all other
systems are made perfect by the perfection of their subordinate parts, the
great system should require for its perfection parts that are not only
subordinate to others, but imperfect in themselves; these are questions
that never can be explained, and might be useless if known. On this
subject
Providence has thought fit to elude our curiosity, satis
fied with granting us motives to consolation.
"In this situation, man has called in the friendly assistance of
philosophy; and Heaven, seeing the incapacity of that to console him,
has given him the aid of religion. The consolations of philosophy are
very amusing, but often fallacious. It tells us that life is filled with
comforts if we will but enjoy them; and, on the other hand, though we
unavoidably have miseries here, life is short, and they will soon be over.
Thus do these consolations destroy each other; for if life is a place of
comfort, its shortness must be misery; and if it be long, our griefs are
protracted. Thus philosophy is weak; but religion comforts in a higher
strain. Man is here, it tells us, fitting up his mind and preparing it for
another abode. When the good man leaves the body, and is all a
glorious mind, he will find he has been making himself a heaven of
happiness here; while the wretch that has been maimed and contaminated
by his vices, shrinks from his body with terror, and finds that he has
anticipated the vengeance of Heaven. To religion, then, we must hold,
in every circumstance of life, for our truest comfort; for if already we
are happy, it is a pleasure to think we can make that happiness
unending; and if we are miserable, it is very consoling to think that there
is a place of rest. Thus to the fortunate, religion holds out a continuance
of bliss; to the wretched, a change from pain.
"But though religion is very kind to all men, it has promised
peculiar rewards to the unhappy; the sick, the naked, the houseless, the
heavy-laden, and the prisoner, have ever most frequent promises in our
sacred law. The Author of our religion everywhere professes himself
the wretch's friend, and, unlike the false ones of this world, bestows all
his caresses upon the forlorn. The unthinking have censured this as
partiality, as a preference without merit to deserve it. But they never
reflect that it is not in the power even of Heaven itself to make the offer
of unceasing felicity as great a gift to the happy as to the miserable. To
the first, eternity is but a single blessing, since, at most, it but increases
what they already possess. To the latter, it is a double advantage; for it
diminishes their pain here, and rewards them with heavenly bliss
hereafter.
"But Providence is in another respect kinder to the poor than the
rich; for as it thus makes the life after death more desirable, so it
smooths the passage there. The wretched have had a long familiarity
with every face of terror. The man of sorrows lays himself quietly
down, without possessions to regret, and but few ties to stop his
departure; he feels only nature's pang in the final separation, and this in
no way greater than he has often fainted under before; for, after a certain
degree of pain, every new breach that death
opens in the constitution, nature kindly covers with
insensibility.
"Thus Providence has given the wretched two advantages over
the happy in this life: greater felicity in dying, and in Heaven all that
superiority of pleasure which arises from contrasted enjoyment. And
this superiority, my friends, is no small advantage, and seems to be one
of the pleasures of the poor man in the parable; for though he was
already in heaven, and felt all the raptures it could give, yet it was
mentioned as an addition to his happiness, that he once had been
wretched, and now was comforted; that he had known what it was to be
miserable, and now felt what it was to be happy.
"Thus, my friends, you see religion does what philosophy could
never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the
unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard.
It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal
hopes to aspire after it; but if the rich have the advantage of enjoying
pleasure here, the poor have the endless satisfaction of knowing what it
was once to be miserable, when crowned with endless felicity
hereafter; and even though this should be called a small advantage, yet
being an eternal one, it must make up by duration what the temporal
happiness of the great may have exceeded by intenseness.
"These are, therefore, the consolations which the
wretched have peculiar to themselves, and in which
they are above the rest of mankind; in other respects they are below
them. They who would know the miseries of the poor, must see life and
endure it. To declaim on the temporal advantages they enjoy, is only
repeating what none other either believe or practice. The men who have
the necessaries of living are not poor, and they who want them must be
miserable. Yes, my friends, we must be miserable. No vain efforts of a
refined imagination can soothe the wants of nature, can give elastic
sweetness to the dank vapor of a dungeon, or ease to the throbbings of a
broken heart! Let the philosopher from his couch of softness tell us that
we can resist all these. Alas! the effort by which we resist them is still
the greatest pain.
"Death is slight, and any man may sustain it; but torments are
dreadful, and these no man can endure.
"To us, then, my friends, the promises of happiness in Heaven
should be particularly dear; for if our reward be in this life alone, we
are then indeed, of all men the most miserable. When I look round
these gloomy walls, made to terrify, as well as to confine us; this light
that only serves to show the horrors of the place, those shackles that
tyranny has imposed, or crime made necessary; when I survey these
emaciated looks, and hear those groans, oh, my friends, what a glorious
exchange would heaven be for these! To fly through regions unconfined
as air, to bask in the sunshine of
eternal bliss, to carol over endless hymns of praise, to
have no master to threaten or insult us, but the form of Goodness
himself forever in our eyes; when I think of these things, Death becomes
the messenger of very glad tidings; when I think of these things, his
sharpest arrows become the staff of my support; when I think of these
things, what is there in life worth having? when I think of these things,
what is there that should not be spurned away? Kings in their palaces
should groan for such advantages; but we, humbled as we are, should
yearn for them.
"And shall these things be ours? Ours they will certainly be if we
but try for them; and, what is a comfort, we are shut out from many
temptations that would retard our pursuit. Only let us try for them and
they will certainly be ours, and, what is still a comfort, shortly too; for
if we look back on a past life it appears but a very short span, and
whatever we may think of the rest of life, it will yet be found of less
duration; as we grow older the days seem to grow shorter, and our
intimacy with Time ever lessens the perception of his stay. Then let us
take comfort now, for we shall soon be at our journey's end; we shall
soon lay down the heavy burthen laid by Heaven upon us; and though
Death, the only friend of the wretched, for a little while mocks the
weary traveller with the view, and like his horizon still flies before him,
yet the time will certainly and shortly come when
we shall cease from our toil; when the luxuriant great
ones of the world shall no more tread us to the earth; when we shall
think with pleasure of our sufferings below; when we shall be
surrounded with all our friends, or such as deserved our friendship;
when our bliss shall be unutterable, and still, to crown all,
unending."