A Book of Gems, or, Choice selections from the writings of Benjamin Franklin. Бенджамин Франклин
and only evil, continually. Infidelity has nothing for the world. While it would take Christianity from us, it has nothing to propose. It is no system—no doctrine—teaches nothing and defends nothing. Its only province is to stand and deny. It finds fault with everything, starts doubts, destroys confidence, fills the world with fears, and spreads an eternal gloom over the prospects and hopes of all nations. Reason and the light of nature have been tried longer and more effectually than any system in the world. At least four thousand years have the pagan nations been trying what they could do for our race without a revelation from God. In all the experiments yet made, with no guide but reason and the light of nature, the tendency has been downward. Deterioration has been the universal result, without the light of the Bible. We then, cling to the Bible, and the religion it reveals, as the only hope of the world. If it fails, all must fail, and all must be lost. But it is folly of the most stupid order to speak of the Bible failing. Its Author is emphatically the friend of man. Its holy lessons are all for our good. All who have been led by it, are thankful they ever knew it. It has never deceived one or misled one. No one has ever lamented being led by it. The more solemn and affecting the circumstances around us, and the greater the trials in which we are placed, the more comforting and precious are its holy consolations to the soul. It encourages all that is good; discourages and condemns all that is evil. It is our guide and comfort through the journey of life; nor does it fail when we are sinking in death. No one who believed it before, in a dying hour denies and repudiates the Bible. But many determined infidels have recanted and repudiated their infidelity when sinking into the eternal state. That which they talked in health, that which dwelt upon their tongues in their mad career through life, they themselves condemned, in the most awful and solemn moments of life, and with their dying lips repudiated. How shameful and preposterous, that a man should live such a life of folly and inconsistency as to be compelled in his dying moments to condemn all his past life, with all the sentiments he had cherished and inculcated, and warn all men against them!
NOT RECEIVING THE REFORMATION, BUT CHRIST.
THE question is not whether men will receive us, our doctrines, our views, our church, or “the Reformation,” or “Reformation doctrines” but whether they will receive him whom the Father hath sent, love him, follow him, place themselves under him, obey him, and trust in him forever. He is the center of all union, all love, and all piety. Upon him, all who love him, have received him and desire to follow him, being led by his voice, may unite. Having received him, been identified with him, as a matter of course, we receive all who have been received by him, are united with and love them, as members of the same family. When we speak of union, the question is not about receiving men, nor their views, but whether we can agree upon a leader, head, lawgiver or king. Jesus is the true Light that enlightens every man that comes into the world. He is the only divinely authorized head, lawgiver and leader. The question we have to urge upon men, is whether they will come under him. If they will, they should proceed, like young Saul, to ascertain of him, what he requires of them, before they can be received, pardoned and saved by him. When they learn this of him, and come to him, in the way he has appointed, or by doing what he requires, they are received by him, united with him and with all that belong to him, and, as long as they continue to love and obey him, no adverse power can separate them from him. He is our rock, the rock of our salvation—the foundation which God has laid—for union in “one new man,” or one new church, one “building of God,” one “house of God,” in which dwells the “one spirit,” given by the “one Lord.”
Here upon the one rock—one foundation, which is Christ—in the one building or temple, in Christ, where all spiritual blessings are found, all the good, the pure and holy, may strike hands, unite, live in holy fellowship, while they continue in this world of sorrow and affliction, and after, be received up into glory, to dwell with their Lord and the holy society of the redeemed forever. Brethren, look at the vast numbers we have gathered into the one fold, and take fresh courage, and let us enter upon the work with spirit and might for another year.
LIFTED ABOVE SECTS AND PARTIES.
THE men who are meditating on union are now on trial, being put to the test, and will be compelled to show where they stand. Those who love union among christians more than denominationalism will sacrifice the denomination for union, but those who love denominationalism more than union will sacrifice union for the denomination. The union of the people of God is from heaven; the denomination is from man. The denomination is the party, sect, faction. The body of Christ, or kingdom of God, is no sect, party or denomination. It is as broad as the dominion of King Jesus. It is above all sects, parties and denominations. The man that rises so as to grasp the kingdom of God in his mind, ascends far above all sects, parties and denominations; up to the throne and Him who sits on the throne; to the Supreme Majesty of heaven and earth. He loves the King above all kings and potentates, and loves the kingdom of God above all the kingdoms and empires of the world, and supremely above all parties, sects or denominations. We love no denomination, nor denominationalism, but love the people involved in the denomination; and while we desire to see the denomination literally abolished, wiped out, we desire to save the kingdom of God, the union of the people of God, and the people themselves. This can be done if the people will have it so. But if they love the sect, party or denomination more than the Church of God, or the body of Christ, they will keep an eye to the sect, party or denomination; to their little side institutions of human device; every one of which originated with men, and without one scrap of divine authority; instead of rising to the grand and glorious institution ordained of God, with the Lord for its head, and the law of God for the rule of its faith and practice.
MAKING THE BIBLE SUPPORT HUMAN SYSTEMS.
THERE can be no apology for a man who knows what the truth is, what the doctrine of Christ is, what christianity is, who will use it merely as a proof to sustain, prove, and impose something else upon himself and others, for he might just as easily have received the truth, the doctrine of Christ, christianity itself, enjoyed it, and been saved by it, as to have trifled with it, in trying to prove something else by it. But if a man does not know what the truth is, the doctrine of Christ, christianity is, and adopts something else, he is simply guessing at it, and is not to be relied upon. He has no foundation.
We are as well convinced, as we are that there is a glorious heaven for the righteous, and a hell for the wicked, that no man now living, who knows what the Lord’s truth is, what the gospel of Christ is, what christianity is, and what the Bible is, and has appealed to it to sustain something else, and now continues so to appeal to it, could, if his life were at stake, give a good reason why he did not receive the truth itself, the gospel, christianity, the Bible itself, rely upon it as his only hope for life, his only guide, as the only divine system, the only divine institution, in the place of perverting its glorious influence and power to sustain and prop up something else. And we are equally certain, that no man can answer to God, when the actions of all men shall be spread out in the last judgment, for such a course. If christianity is a system, if it is a divine institution, if it is the religion of Jesus Christ, if it is from God, and now binding upon the human family, as almost all the religious parties of these times admit, and as can not be denied, the sin of departing from it is great enough; but to have the assurance to try to make it sanction any other system, to testify in support of any other,