As it was with Edwards, who in the same sentence wherein he says, that God appeared to him as "an infinite fountain of divine glory and sweetness, being full and sufficient to satisfy the soul, pouring forth itself in sweet communications like the sun in its glory," adds also, "My wickedness appeared to me perfectly ineffable and swallowing up all thought and imagination like an infinite deluge or mountains over my head," so it was preeminently with these servants of the Lord. In Payson we have an extraordinary example of the results of spiritual culture. We may call him the Protestant ascetic. In his determined pursuit of holiness he mortified his body to the last degree of endurance. He prolonged his fasts till his friends begged and importuned him to stay his severities, lest his health should give way. And his bodily rigors were only the shadow of his spiritual. He hunted sin through all its retreats, unmasked it, chastised it, slew it with a determination which gave no quarter. We cannot commend his immoderate asceticism, by which his health was impaired and his days shortened. We think also that as in the case of Brainerd, there was a sombreness in his piety which is not calculated to win men to a love of consecration. But oh, for a few present illustrations of such holiness as his! How it amazed and dazzled men by its excess of brightness. The anger of the worldling dashed madly against it; the reproach of Christ fell where the image of Christ was so conspicuously fixed. But the holy life triumphed forever when dissolution set its stamp upon his brow. Behold him in the chamber of death. His white face is turned calmly up toward heaven; his pastoral hands are folded across his breast; on his burial shroud is pinned a paper bearing this inscription: "Remember the words which I spake unto you while I was yet present with you." And as the hushed throng passes by for the last look, it is like the multitude returning from the cross, smiting on the breast and each saying to himself, "truly this was a righteous man." Payson in his death chamber at Portland, MeCheyne, borne from St. Peter's in Dundee, while the sorrowing multitudes present a scene of lamentation like the mourning over the good king Josiah - let us ponder these two scenes, and be persuaded that with all it has lost, our poor world has yet an instinct which honors holiness, and will at last lay upon it its tribute of approval. Would now that from all these examples of holy living we might gain a strong incitement to follow in the same way. For holiness is the true birth-trait and characteristic of the sons of God. If we are "partakers of the divine nature" we must exhibit the essential mark of that nature, which is holiness, or, as the Scripture says, we must be made "partakers of his holiness." "This justifies us to be the sons of God, when He hath taken a slip from His purity, and engrafted it in our spirits; He can never own us for His children without His mark, the stamp of holiness. Our spiritual extraction from Him is but pretended unless we do things worthy of so illustrious a birth, and becoming the honor of so great a Father. What evidence can we else have of a childlike love to God, since the proper act of love is to imitate the object of our affections?"* As holiness gives the strongest evidence and testimony that we are of God and from God as to our spiritual origin, so it furnishes the best warrant of our going to God when our course is finished. "Holiness without which no man shall see the Lord," says the Scripture. Here or here * Stephen Charnock, 1628-1680. after, it is impossible that the soul should have any clear vision of God, except through the medium of that purity which is the most essential element of his nature. "In thy light shall we see light” — and holiness is the light with which God clothes himself as with a garment. The more of this we have, the more of present communion shall we enjoy; the nearer we shall come to the spirit of the Most Holy, and the more shall we know of Him whose ways are unsearchable. And so likewise in the future. For in the world to come what would it profit us that heaven's gates were open to us unless heaven's garment were upon us? Were we to be placed there in our native impurity we should be unspeakably miserable. The eye of God, under whose gaze all pure spirits rest in holy delight, would bring naught but torment to us. We should wish only to escape from his presence, and to find in the rocks and mountains a hiding-place from Him that sitteth on the throne and from the Lamb forever. Therefore with all self denial and communion, with all putting off of the old man and putting on of the new man, let us seek to be conformed to the image of God, "to the end he may establish |
