GODEY'S LADY'S BOOK
Philadelphia, January 1850

A man may have been alive a long time, yet never have tasted of man's true life – for man's true life is not measured by his years! For, even allowing that a man sleeps as little, eats as little, and wastes as little time as that emperor who at last sleeps beneath the dome of the Invalides, or as little as is possible; and supposing that, into all the hours thus saved, he crowds the most intense intellectual action, the most compacted social enjoyments, the most incessant devotion to business, the most successful results of high mental effort; so that, looking at the dense collection of busy moments, thoughts, labors, and joys, and at the powerful and sparkling rush of the tide of being through all its sluices, he is strongly impelled to exclaim, again and again, with the great novelist, Sat est vixisse, Sat est vixisse; still, he may have gone through with all this, and yet not even have begun to live, so far as the true end and purpose of his being are concerned. He may have gone through it without one right thought or feeling towards God, and without having formed a single habit, or acquired a single principle, which can render his futurity happy. He only has begun to live who has resolved and begun to live for God, for heaven, and for eternity! In brief terms, the true Christian alone knows what it is to live. I say not that this Christian has a higher degree of intellectual activity, strength, and enjoyment than such a man as has been supposed. He may have more or less of' this sort of life, according to the natural character of his mind; but I say the true Christian has another kind of life – a kind of which the merely intellectual man, however eminent, polished, and renowned he may be, knows nothing; a life which shall be growing intense and perfect forever, when that of the mere intellectualist, or of the earthly voluptuary, shall have gone out in dark death.

The Christian alone, I repeat, knows what it is truly to live. Hence, the Holy Spirit is said to quicken or make alive those whom it brings to repentance, faith in Christ, and love to God. Previously to this heavenly work, they are "dead, dead in trespasses and in sins." The votary of pleasure, St. Paul saith, "is dead even while she liveth." And so, by nature, are all equally dead. Before the Spirit quickeneth, all are "sitting in darkness and the shadow of death." Over the condition of fallen man, spiritual death casts everywhere its dark, melancholy shade. In that gloomy valley of sin there is, indeed, what men call life; and it makes g vast stir, and throws the wide darkness into mighty

tumult and confusion. That is a vale in which thrones totter and empires tremble, and where the vast collection of human things, like the waters of an ever stormy lake, ceaselessly toss themselves into noise and violence. Ambition is there, and pleasure is there, and avarice is there; envy and pride, malice and revenge, sensuality and lust, discontent and contentiousness, selfishness and meanness are there. And better things are there – human loves and friendships; the benevolence that wisheth well, and the beneficence that doeth, well for time; honor that scorns the littleness of wrong to man, and patriotism that burns with zeal to see its country great; deep thoughts and high imaginings; eloquence and poetry; monuments that entomb the bones, and books that embalm the minds of olden generations – all these are there in that valley of restlessness, and. like them, countless things besides. And yet, in that wide darkness, all is dead. It is not life, but death that makes the mighty movement. The soul there is cut off and cast away from God; and spiritual deadness, a death in sin, has settled down in all that valley of moving shadows. When the living Spirit of God comes and does his quickening work on the soul, he makes the dead alive as emphatically as if the power of God were to take a breathless, bloodless body, breathe once more into its nostrils, pour the blood anew into circulation through its veins, and set it up again on its feet, a seeing and a moving thing. When the Spirit does his quickening work, he brings back the soul from the state in which it is cut off and cast away, into vital union with God. He takes the severed branch, re-engrafts it into the great vine of life, and thus brings it into connection with those spiritual influences which make it bud and blossom, and bring forth the fruits of life eternal.

Herein is life – the life of holy love; the life that is in God himself; the life that looks on man's former death and triumph; the life that looks on Him who is now its source, and rejoices; the life that sees God in all things without>; the life that feels God in the new marvels within; the life that is "hid with Christ in God," and yet the life that develops true Christian godliness in man. It is the life of that soul which has been baptized, not only with water, but also with the Holy Ghost; and which feeds, not only with the senses on sacramental elements, but also by faith on the perfect righteousness of Christ. It is the life of that soul which hates sin, and loves holiness; which has renounced the world and embosomed itself in the church; and which, though it sojourns for labor and for trial upon earth, yet has its house, mid looks for its rest, only in heaven.

This is the life of which I speak, when I say "the Christian only knows what it is truly to live." And thou h he may be born into this life even in the sweet hours of childhood, amid the still thoughts of the closet, and by the silent invoking of God's truth, as well as in the reasoning days of manhood, among the sacred doings of the sanctuary, and by the Spirit shed through visible means; though this life be noiseless in the tenor of its way as the concealed meadow-brook that scarce murmurs its hidden music on the listener's ear; and though it leave the Christian, in outward seeming, but like other men, only superior in gentleness and humility, in purity and goodness; yet is it a most wondrous life. The mere man of the world knows nothing like it; it differs from all other life as widely as the spiritual differs from the sensual, or as obedience from rebellion.

Ask the man who has long been groping amid the dim shadows of error, fashioning a god to please himself, and denying the only Lord that bought him, how he feels when – after many wanderings, perhaps – he finds himself at last "delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son," with the truth as it is in Jesus "shining clearly within him, and the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost." Ask the Infidel scoffer how be feels when, after having laughed at sin, and hell, and God, he has been made to see his sins, to tremble on the verge of the pit, and to feel within himself the wrath of God; and when, from this state, he has been led by the gentle hand of mercy to the Cross of Christ, to peace in believing, and to the sweetness of reconciliation with the Father. Ask the miser how he feels when God has cured his heart of that cancer, the love of money; showed him that the soul was not made to be married to a silver idol; torn away the metal casings from around his heart: cut the strings which bound him down to his treasures; and brought him forth to feel how precious are the Christian's hopes, how sweet is "the luxury of doing good," how rich even in anticipation is "the inheritance of the saints in light," and how glorious is the liberty of the unbound child of God. Ask the merely moral man how he feels when the Spirit has shined into his heart and showed him its hidden defilements; undermined his foundation on the sand, and toppled to the earth the proud edifice of his self-righteousness, and then led him to the Rock Christ, and taught him to build there a house that shall never fall – a house joined to its foundation, and cemented in every part by a faith that appropriates the perfect righteousness of the Saviour. Ask the gay and thoughtless votary of pleasure how she feels when, after having Jived for years amidst wreathed smiles and flatteries and mirth; after having ridiculed the man of prayer, the deep strugglings of the penitent heart, and the heavenly joys of the worshiping believer; and after having schooled herself into a levity that could not fasten its thought on solem truth, into an ignorance that could not grasp the simplest element of religion,

and into a blindness that could not discriminate among the very first principles of the new life, When, after all this, she is made (if such almost miracles are yet wrought on earth) a thinking and serious, enlightened and firm, obedient and loving child of God, through faith in a crucified Redeemer; finds the spell of her enchanting delusions broken, and the vanities of her thoughtless life dispersed for ever; throws off her follies; lets go the hands that had led her in the gay whirl and the wild dance of the world; comes forth the calmly serious, cheerfully reflective, and rationally happy pupil of Christ; and realizes, at length, that she is living in the tight of God's countenance, within the circle of eternal realities, and amidst the activities of a heavenly life. And, finally, ask the ripened Christian how he feels when, after having been made a new creature, he has gone, for long years, convicting with doubt, or darkness, or difficulty, resisting sin, striving after perfection, and watching against temptations; and is at length seen coming up from the wilderness leaning on the arm of his Beloved, brought out upon the borders of his heavenly Canaan, victorious over the world and over his own corruptions; his hands well skilled in the heavenly work and warfare of his profession; his faith strong, his hope mature, and his love a most divine flame; his activities trained and delighting in doing good and in winning the world to Christ; his sympathies with the cause of God, and his word, all warm, and deep, and steady; his thoughts and faculties intensely occupied on the momentous things of truth and duty in time, and of truth and blessedness in eternity; the pulses of a begun and a glorious immortality beating high, and sometimes thrillingly through all the channels of his soul; and all things within him gathering strength and confidence for the hour when he is to pass from his benign activities among his fellow-men to his final victory over death, and to his full entrance upon life. Ask each, ask all of these how they feel when thus brought into vitality of union with Christ, into the mystery of communion with the Spirit, and into the reality of fellowship with the Father, and they will answer, one and all: We feel that of which we had once no conception; we never knew what it was really to live till we thus began to live for God, for heaven, and for eternity. All . our previous existence was but feverishness and shadows, empty dreams, and vain triflings; the madness of presumption; the delirium of the heart; the bondage of reason; a chase after phantoms; and a grasping of pain in the midst of pleasure, and of disappointment in the midst of success. We never knew what it was to live till we learned it with the Apostle in living for Christ. Here is life, "Christ in us the hope of glory;" the Holy Spirit ruling our obedient wills, and "the love of God shed abroad in our hearts;" the soul undividedly consecrated to her Saviour; all the gifts of God used without abuse; time ennobled by receiving illapses from eternity; and earth made glorious by revealed opening. into heaven.

My dear reader, if what has now been said has given you any just conception of what it is to live, and of what all human life should be, let me ask your attention to the remark that this life, in all its fullness, may be yours. Peculiar as it is, and full of the high mysteries of God, it may all be yours. Neither human skill, indeed, nor human power can produce it, while the skill and power of God are slighted; for it has God for its author, and, without his authorship, cannot even begin to be. Rut, by his grace, it may be both begun and perfected in every heart that desires and seeks it. Wondrous as are its nature and its developments, a little child may realize them all. In order to this, nothing is required of any one but that he should be humble and teachable, submissive and obedient; that he should cast down pride and throw away rebellion, and yield the heart freely to the influences of the Spirit and the requirements of truth. God is in nitely desirous, and incessantly seeking, to generate this life in all your souls; and to him, unopposed, the work, all wondrous as it is, is perfectly simple and easy. Look at the little blade of grass in summer, and see how silently it grows in green life and beauty. Not easier to the power of God is that simple process than to the same power is the mystery of the new birth; and of the divine life which follows it, in the heart that ingenuously and obediently yields to all that God would have it feel and do. If you are not willing to yield thus; if you have too much pride or prejudice, or hatred of holiness, to give up your hearts to God, and to take the stand in the world which be requires, then the work will never be done. Rut if you are willing thus to yield, and thus to be, and thus to do what God requires, then the work shall be done – done even m your hearts, and done with a sweetness and a preciousness of result which shall make you long after the ripeness of your new life, and glory only in that Cross on which your old hangs, crucified with Christ.

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