Читать книгу Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader - Benj. N. Martin - Страница 71

We are warranted in praying to be brought through, temptation, when it is not of our own seeking, but of God's sending. If we walk without care and without vigilance, if we acknowledge not God in our ways, and take counsel at Ekron, and not at Zion—leaving the Bible unread, and the closet unvisited—if the sanctuary and the Sabbath lose their ancient hold upon us, and we then go on frowardly in the way of our own eyes, and after the counsel of our own heart, we have reason to tremble. A conscience quick and sensitive, under the presence of the indwelling Spirit, is like the safety-lamp of the miner, a ready witness and a mysterious guardian against the deathful damps, that unseen, but fatal, cluster around our darkling way. To neglect prayer and watching, is to lay aside that lamp, and then, though the eye see no danger and the ear hear no warning, spiritual death may be gathering around us her invisible vapors, stored with ruin, and rife for a sudden explosion. We are tempting God, and shall we be delivered?

And if this be so with, the negligent professor of religion, is it not applicable also to the openly careless, who never acknowledged Christ's claims to the heart and the life?

With an evil nature, and a mortal body, and a brittle and brief tenure of earth, you are traversing perilous paths. Had you God for your friend, your case would be far other than it is. Peril and snare might still beset you; but you would confront and traverse them, as the Hebrews of old did the weedy bed of the Red Sea, its watery walls guarding their dread way, the pillar of light the vanguard, and the pillar of cloud the rearguard of their mysterious progress, the ark and the God of the ark piloting and defending them. … You are like a presumptuous and unskilful traveller, passing under the arch of the waters of Niagara. The falling cataract thundering above you; a slippery, slimy rock beneath your gliding feet; the smoking, roaring abyss yawning beside you; the imprisoned winds beating back your breath; the struggling daylight coming but mistily to the bewildered eyes—what is the terror of your condition if your guide, in whose grasp your fingers tremble, be malignant, and treacherous, and suicidal, determined on destroying your life at the sacrifice of his own? He assures you that he will bring you safely through upon the other side of the fall. And SUCH is SATAN. Lost himself, and desperate, he is set on swelling the number of his compeers in shame, and woe, and ruin.

[Footnote 15: A Baptist divine, born in New York city, where he has long been settled over a church; eminent for general scholarship and literary ability.]

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=George B. Cheever, 1807-=(Manual, pp. 480, 490.)

From "The Wanderings of a Pilgrim."