Page images
PDF
EPUB

24. If you have hopes of salvation, is it ingenuous to continue in sin?

25. If you were sure of salvation, you will still suffer loss by delay.

26. How many stay for you while you delay?-God the Father, Son, and Spirit; angels, ministers, and godly persons.

27. Christ did not delay to die. 28. God did not delay to do you good.

29. When you are to receive any outward deliverance, the sooner then, you think, the better.

30. Your worldly delights are passing without delay.

31. Worldly business you delay not, as sowing, reaping, &c.

32. You delay not to receive gifts from your fellows.

33. You should wait for God, rather than he wait for you.

34. You will not delay helping a neighbour in an emergency, and you will not help yourself.

35. You deal worse with God than with the devil, for you delay not to do his will.

36. Speedy turning can do no

harm, and will never cause repent

ance.

37. It will grieve you much, if you do ever turn, that you turned

no sooner.

38. Has not God a right to appoint the time? And he says, "To-day."

39. Dare you say you know better than God when to turn?

40. Quick coming makes you more welcome.

41. Do with God as you would others should do to you.

42. Delay is a denial.

43. God does not stay for all, as for you.

44. God will not always patiently wait.

45. Delays weary God's ministers. 46. Unspeakable loss you suffer while you delay.

47. You are doing what must be undone, or you are undone.

48. Your conversion will be more grievous, more painful.

49. Delays are contrary to the nature of the work and the soul. 50. If you slumber, your damnation slumbereth not.

The Letter Box.

ON THE APATHY OF THE HINDOOS.
By John Wilson, D.D., Bombay.

SIR,-I send you the following,
which I take from a periodical pub-
lished twenty years ago, by minis-
ters and members of the Church of
Scotland. It is in the second
volume of the Scottish Christian
Herald, page 782. Perhaps you
will think it worthy of being again

published in your excellent PENNY MAGAZINE.

Yours, &c., JAMES BUCHANAN.

66, Carrick Street, Glasgow.

IN going to church yesterday, my friend, Mr. W., and I found stretched

upon one of the public streets a poor man apparently in the agonies of death. Though he had his head and body uncovered, and a scorching sun was pouring down his rays upon him, there was not found a single native, amongst numerous passers-by and spectators, to lift him into the shade; and though he was in danger every moment of having his feeble existence extinguished by the vehicles which were moving along, there was not a single person found to remove him from the middle of the road. This wretched man was lying near the gate of the pinjarapur, an enclosure and hospital lately erected by the Jainas, for the benefit of the brutes, and which, a few months ago, received from Motichand Amichand (now deceased) an endowment amounting to two lacs of rupees. The ostentatious clemency of his neighbourhood to objects which do not require it, and his unpitied and unrelieved misery, made a sad impression upon my mind, and formed a very painful exemplification of what, alas! to me needs no illustration of the character of the heathen, as "proud and boasters," but at the same time as "without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful."

Some months ago I saw a lofty cocoa-nut tree, around the roots of which some gardeners had been digging, with the view of changing its inclination, suddenly fall to the ground with a tremendous crash. I rushed forward to it, that I might learn the fate of a man who was fixed among the branches composing its tuft. I found him crushed be

neath the tree, with his limbs broken in two or three places, otherwise sadly mangled, and unable to speak. Several persons, including some women, were drawing water at a well, from which he was not more than two yards distant. Not a single one of them expressed the least compassion for the wretched man, and most of them filled their vessels, and attempted to walk off, as if nothing had occurred. I had actually to threaten them, before I could get sufficient assistance to get him extricated. He very speedily expired.

I could fill several sheets with accounts of scenes and occurrences with which I have been personally connected, similar to those which I have now noticed; but I forbear. This apathy of the Hindoos, I would remark, however, is that feature of their minds which too many of our countrymen, who, after learning their ways, come forward as their apologists, have denominated a very virtue," mildness," "patience," or "placidity;" and concerning which they have discoursed with a sublimity mounting above the Pleiades. Verily the Hindoo mind is placid. It is as placid as a pool of stagnant water, and as putrid withal. It can behold the acme of human misery without pity; it can ignite the funeral pile, which is to consume as well the living as the dead parent, without a sigh. It can shed the blood of innocent and helpless offspring without compunction. It can calmly look on death without fear, and at the same time hail it without preparation. It is placid because it is morally torpid.

It is the victim of a creed, for the concoction of which all the potentates and principalities of darkness had surely assembled, in laborious and protracted conclave, and to the propagation and support of which they have lent their chief endeavours, their arch, diabolical energies. Let a man believe that his soul is a disintegration from the Supreme Mind, and that, sooner or later, whatever may be its mishaps in its various transmigrations through human, brute, and vegetable forms, it will re-enter that Mind, and be lost in its immensity, and he will become indifferent respecting either his own weal or woe, or those of his fellow. The beast of the field, the fowl that flieth in the air, and the creeping thing, he will, in fact, consider as more the objects of his regard than man.

"Why," said I one day to the person in charge of the pinjarapur, to which I have alluded, "do you here lodge horses and cows, and form no hospital for the reception of men suffering from disease and poverty?" "Man can tell his wants," he said in reply; "while the irrational animals, as you call them, but whom we deem as constitutionally the same with yourself, would suffer, independently of our interférence, in the solitude of their own being." It would not have been difficult for me to have confounded this logician by an appeal to his own admitted principles. While the ultimatum of the desire of the Hindoo and Jaina is absorption, any attempt to protract life in any form is merely a retarding of those processes which must neces

sarily be gone through before that summum bonum can be attained. I thought it better, however, to establish and illustrate the doctrine of human responsibility, which he had completely overlooked.

I know of an apathy parallel to that of the Hindoos, which even transcends it. It is that with which the inhabitants of India are viewed by the majority of professing Christians-that with which, dear readers, you yourselves may possibly be regarding them. That holy and

blessed book which the true and faithful God has inspired by his Spirit, to which he has applied his own signet, which he has put into your hands, to which, before men and angels, and his own omniscience, you have declared your assent, which you have sworn to make the rule of your faith and obedience, and on the veracity of which you have not hesitated to peril the interests of your immortal souls, declares that they, as heathen, are perishing for lack of knowledge, and about to sink to everlasting destruction in the regions of woe! God's unsearchable providence, in its most wonderful actings and interpositions, and almost without the intention and agency of man, has placed one hundred and thirty millions of them either under the direct sway or the efficient influence of your country, and so ordered it, that the gospel, a specific for their moral malady, the unequalled product of God's wisdom and power, may be most advantageously offered to them in every way in which it is capable of being proposed in your native land.

And yet you have, perhaps, never once heartily prayed, nor contributed, as of the ability which God has given you, for their conversion and salvation! You have not personally, nor through the instrumentality of others, told them to flee from the wrath to come! You have not spoken to them of the infinitely precious blood of Christ, of the all-efficacious fountain which has been opened for sin and for uncleanness, and of the refuge which God has provided for the most guilty of Adam's sons! You have not declared to them the "love of the Spirit," ready to renovate their souls, and adorn them with all the beauty of holiness! You have not pointed them to those happy regions into which they may enter, and in which they may experience fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore!

Their moral misery, in short, you have neither pitied nor relieved; and, in despite of the last command of Christ himself, you withhold from them that instruction which, under the blessing of God, would issue in their unspeakable and eternal happiness! In the day of inquisition, which most certainly awaits you, what will you answer for your hard-heartedness, your supineness, and your apathy?

A FRIENDLY LETTER TO A YOUNG MAN ENTERING A SITUATION.

SIR,-If you think the following letter may be useful to other young persons besides the youth to whom it was originally addressed, you

[blocks in formation]

DEAR JOSEPH,-I am glad you have got a situation, and much do I wish you to do all in your power, by good conduct, &c., to retain it. Let me, then, advise you thus:

1. Be thoroughly industrious and attentive to your duty.

2. Keep good hours. Be always at your post in good time in the morning, and at home before late at night.

3. Very carefully and determi. nately avoid bad company of all kinds.

4. See that you be upright and honest to a penny-yea, to a pin.

5. Be neat, orderly, and cleanly in your person and habits. A good and becoming appearance helps a

man on.

6. Get all the spare time you can when your business duties are all discharged, for reading, writing, and improving your mind. Rise early for this noble purpose, but do not sit late so as to risk your health. Duly value health.

7. Take good care of your little pocket-money for buying books, and let not a fraction be laid out on drink, cigars, snuff, &c. These foolish, vulgar, and harmful things do not cost the writer one penny in the year.

8. Get connected with some Sun. day-school, a young men's mutual

improvement society, and of course a place of worship.

9. Revere the Sabbath-day. Keep off rail and river. If you require recreation, walk quietly and meditatively out into the fields in the intervals of Divine worship, taking care to attend regularly the house of God. In making your choice, go where the gospel is faithfully preached, and where you get the most good to your soul.

10. Read a psalm or other portion of your Bible daily-yes, daily— and read with earnest prayer to God for the teaching of his Holy Spirit, that you may be made "wise unto salvation," through faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, Joseph, keep this letter by you. Read it from time to time, and do, do think seriously of the advice it contains. Be concerned to put it in practice. Pray God to help you by his grace to do so. Much do I wish you to do well both for body and soul, for time and eternity. I can say nothing better, and now must leave you to your own reflections.

Write me at your leisure, and at any time when I can be of service to you; and be sure to keep up a dutiful correspondence with friends at home.

Your assured well-wisher,

E. R.

The Christian Household.

THREE BABES IN HEAVEN,

A CHRISTIAN woman said the other day, "I have three little babes in heaven." It was hard, oh, so hard to give them up! When she saw the vacant place at the table, and heard the pattering of tiny footsteps no more, it seemed as if her heart must break. She listened in vain to hear their sweet, innocent prattle; she looked in vain to see their little forms pass in at the open door. One by one they passed away, as the dew-drop exhales from the heart of the rose in the light of the morning sun. She saw one after another, draped in the habiliments of death, laid in its little coffin, and lowered into the cold, damp grave. She mourned then, but now she rejoices, when she re

members that they have escaped from all the temptations and sorrows of this inconstant life.

She believes that her lambs have entered the heavenly fold. Would that Saviour who on earth took little children in his arms and blessed them, repulse her darlings as they knocked for the celestial gates? blessed children on

admittance at Oh, no! if he earth, he will

bless the spirits of children in heaven. That mother rejoices; she has "three little babes in heaven!" She is not fearful that their morals will be corrupted, because they have for companions the prophets, apostles, martyrs, and all who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

« PreviousContinue »