our labors, from our thoughts and affections-something to lift them up, and to send them onward in their path of being. Yea, how true it is that all heaven is in sympathy with one man!--that our penitence rejoices, our minds assist, in this great abyss of being, above, around, and beneath us! ; We shall not die, then, before all that work is accomplished. The usefulness to our fellow-creatures here to assist and regenerate them, and to fill out all the measure of charity; and to ourselves also, and sometimes even to be plunged in evils, that we may see and correct them ere it is too late. this whole use of living, and this wisest moment of dying how affecting and practical is the lesson which it teaches! He takes us away as He sees good. If infants die, we know that they are needed for the heaven of innocence, that they may flow back with their tender influx, and perform some of the most interior works of man's regeneration here. Moreover, they are thus saved from a dangerous and perilous life, and made safe in heaven. It is not orderly for children to die but in the present state of disorder, the system of God's providence largely requires it. If the children of wicked parents die, we see the good providence of God in so ordering it that the very sins which cut off so ruthlessly the offspring of a wicked generation, are turned to an account in peopling heaven. For while by their wickedness they miserably destroy themselves, their children also die off in infancy and youth, infected and corrupted all through with diseasc, and go to the enlarging of all the heavens. Thus it is again, that even the wrath of man is made to praise the Lord, and the remainder of the wrath is always restrained. If accidents occur, and death takes frightful forms, we know that there is a permissive as well as a provisive providence, and that the causes even of these disasters lie frequently concealed in the spiritual world. What is accident to us may be sometimes design and direction in the spiritual world, where is seen more fully the chain of causation, and the personal agents who are permitted to have a part in it. Such things are indeed for the most part disorderly, but they are frequently permitted and overruled in a higher and more definite sense than we ever think of. If the young and the useful are taken by any means, let us call to remembrance how opportunely and quickly a death may occur. This world is not the only field of usefulness; and "to constitute the Grand Man," says Swedenborg, "there is need of spirits from several earths; those who come from our earth into heaven not being sufficient for this purpose, being respectively few; and it is provided of the Lord, that whenever there is a deficiency in any place, as to the quality or quantity of correspondence, a supply be instantly made from another earth, to fill up the deficiency, that so the proportion may be preserved, and thus heaven kept in due consistency." (E. U. 9.) Now, cannot the same be done from our earth? Should it be any marvel that there are sudden and unexpected deaths? "But this is Nature operating," says one. In reply, it is merely to be remarked again, how prone are all merely natural minds to stop in second causes. It is the great error of the irreligious philosophy. True it is that nature operates, and operates according to laws; but the Great First has included all causes and all effects in His Infinite Mind, and nothing transpires, or can transpire, in the world of nature, but from eternity it was seen to be so, and seen to be best in every particular. If it is wrong or evil, it was permitted as the best that could be, consistently with man's freedom. When, therefore, the thing happens, whether by nature so called, or by some angelic or other interposition in the spiritual world, it happens as it was seen and provided for from eternity; and the time of the occurrence is included to a moment! Here it may be remarked, that we do not always die by natural diseases, even when it appears so. When a persca's work on earth is done, or when it is seen that he cannot or will not do any more; when his usefulness, therefore, is brought to its highest possible point in this world, he can easily be made to die, without waiting for the ordinary operation of merely natural laws. We live by influx from God through the heavens. And it is only necessary to cut off that influx, or for the attendant spirits to withdraw a certain distance from the man, and leave him more fully to himself, and he may sicken and die at any time, pining away for the want of that vitality. This may account for many sudden and mysterious deaths, and for many forms of misunderstood diseases. Evil spirits also, with their poisonous and fatal influx, may at any time approach the man who is in evils, being permitted by an all-seeing God. Thus it is, from all these causes, that death walks round the world. And finally, it is to be observed, that if man had lived in true order, and not fallen into sin, he would never have died in infancy, nor prematurely. He would have lived without disease, and have attained a ripe old age; and then, when the body could no longer minister to the internal man, he would have migrated easily and without pain, into the spiritual world. But now it is not so. And since sin has entered into the world, and this kind of death by sin, it is provided that our life be vigilantly guarded and watched; and from the moment of birth, to the point of great decision in every man's destiny, and to the hour of his departure, it is arranged by the Lord with the utmost precision, that we shall come and go under His allmerciful care. And thus it is that there is "a time to die." The common sense of the world has always recognized it, in that it declares that no one goes till his time has come. And may God in mercy grant that we may live a good and useful life, that when our summons comes for the great departure, we may go, -"Not like the quarry slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach the grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." CHAPTER XXV. TRUST IN THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE: ITS NATURE AND EFFECTS. "The more thou puttest in the Lord thy trust, When thou canst say, O Lord, thy will be done, To learn from whence the feeble heart hath might." WE have not written the foregoing chapters without a definite and practical purpose. Our object has been to scatter doubts, to beget a true and rational faith, or confirm and extend it where it is begotten, and to show how reason and revelation, faith and philosophy, unite and harmonize in the well-instructed soul. Thus we have striven to elevate men's minds above the visible and perishing, the unsatisfying and seemingly confused, and fix them rejoicingly in the Everlasting Good:- to bid despair forsake the soul, and sin retire, and a cheerful, hopeful trust and sweet piety take up its abode in the mind. How well or successfully we have done this, must be left to every reader to decide for himself. We do not deem our work by any means perfect, nor even to possess that completeness and finish which we had hoped, in the outset, to have been able to bestow upon it. We honestly confess we have fallen far short of our beloved ideal. But we must crave the privilege of adding one more chapter, and pray heaven to aid us in the writing. If men will not trust in the Divine Providence, it is in vain for them to know it. We have, therefore, one last word- trust, trust, TRUST. To rely with humble and unshaken confidence on such a Providence, is, perhaps, the highest privilege of human beings; for it is attended with an inward peace, and a serene, undisturbed happiness, through all life. But in order to this, something more than mere faith is necessary: "Trust in the Lord and do good," is the brief and divine announcement; and it must be at once perceived that the most unremitting activity of goodness is alone consistent with the most perfect trust. In fact, there can be no true trust which is not founded in good, and which is not in some way either mentally or bodily, or both-constantly active. The Lord is Good itself, and thence Truth itself; and when a man is engaged in this, he is, in fact, working with the Lord, and the Lord with him, to accomplish every purpose of the Divine Wisdom, to lighten every difficulty, and to bring to pass every rational desire of the heart. But this is a matter not attended to and thought of as it should be; nay, it is an error quite prominent, frequently, among those who have the most enlarged views of the Divine Providence, and which springs, perhaps, from a remnant of the old principle of faith alone. A man may be in faith alone with the truth, as well as in falsity. There is no good reason why it should be so; though, undoubtedly, from avoiding one error, they have sometimes lapsed into the opposite extreme. From the manifest folly and uneasiness of men who have hurried and blustered about as though the business of the universe depended upon them, and who, in a state of self-trust, could hardly wait for the slow and orderly movements of Providence, — and, indeed, who seem to have no worthy views of Providence at all, they, in their larger and more spiritual views, have lapsed into a dignified quiet: not only quiet, which, in its true and more appropriate meaning, is a state of harmonious action, - SO harmonious, and so perfectly at one with the divine everlasting movement, as not to be felt at all as an exertion; but they |