more awful than Egyptian darkness. And to close the tremendous scene, Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the Ghost! Now every eye, and ear, and heart was full. A train of serious and interesting reflections flowed from the affecting scene, which never has been, and never will be, erased from the minds of those who witnessed it. (7, p. 220.) Ed. Forsaken by friends, without counsel or witness in his favor, charged with a capital offence, the immaculate Redeemer was condemned was raised between two thieves, and between heaven and earth, as unworthy of either. On his devoted head must fall the enmity and malevolence of a murderous world, excited to desperation by his disclosure and rebuke of their errors, hypocrisy, and vices. What a sight is this! The only Son of God upon the cross!! The Lion of the tribe of Judah in the hands of malicious enemies, whose very strength and lives were sustained by his power. Here was a stoop that hides all other condescension; a tragedy that eclipses all other earthly scenes. 206. DEATH SPIRITUAL. Ed. The human faculties must be exercised upon objects, in order to have a sensible view of them, and become interested in them. By fixing their attention and affections upon temporal objects, and turning them away from eternal realities, sinners become deaf, and blind, and insensible, and dead to the latter. Spiritual death is the effect of a criminal attention to present trifles, and of habitual inattention to future and infinitely important objects. 207. DEBTS. Debt is the worst kind of poverty. "Owe no man anything but love," is the best rule about debts. Sins and debts are always more than one takes them to be. Debts make sad work of character as well as of fortune and happiness. They are fatal to a happy new yearthe genuine slough of despond and made Bacon an unjust judge, Dodd a forger, Arnold a traitor, Professor Webster a murderer, and have led multitudes into crime. In avoiding debts, therefore, DECEIT, GUILE, HYPOCRISY. 127 we avoid a fruitful source of mischief, unhappiness, crime, and ruin. Johnson. Small debts, like small shot, rattle on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound. Great debts are like cannon, of loud noise, but little danger. You must therefore discharge petty debts, that you may have leisure and security to struggle with the rest. Out of debt, out of danger from creditors. Plough or not plough, you must pay your rent. Ed. Unless we can hoodwink and outwit our landlords. Ed. The way to live on a little, is to keep out of debt. Ib. Debts are sacred things. A man can never rise above his honest debts by going into bankruptcy. As far as there is a necessary failure to discharge debts, in reality or in fair prospect, there arises an obligation promptly to confess the inability to the injured party, to deprecate the evil, and properly to sympathize with the sufferer, thus doing all that can immediately be done to mitigate the evil. To follow broken promises with concealment, neglect, or insult, is both a cruel and heinous sin. When a man's circumstances turn badly for his promises, he is bound by conscience, honor, and religion, to live with very strict economy, to practise peculiar self-denial, and to exert all his powers and faculties faithfully and perseveringly, till the obligations to his neighbor are fully discharged, whatever pains it may cost him, unless freely discharged by his creditor. This is the way to make friends on earth, and in heaven; to secure an approving conscience, and to be truly happy. The repudiation of debts, of whatever age, is to abjure moral and Christian character, and to become a practical thief and robber. If we would keep both integrity and independence, free from temptation, we must keep out of debt. [See. 477.] 208. DECEIT, GUILE, HYPOCRISY. Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. Sh. Ther's tricks i' the world. Ib. There's daggers in men's smiles. 16. So Judas kiss'd his Master, And cried, All hail! when as he meant all harm. 128 DECEIT, GUILE, HYPOCRISY. Sh. 'Tis time to fear, when tyrants seem to kiss. Though angel on the outer side! The instruments of darkness tell us truths; Ib. O, what authority and show of truth Ib. When devils will their blackest sins put on, They do suggest at first with heavenly shows. The wages sin promises the sinner, are life, profit, pleasure: but the wages it pays, are death, torment, and perdition. He that would know its falsehood and deceit, must compare its promises with its payments. Secker. Some professed Christians have nothing belonging to the sheep but its skin. Montaigne. If falsehood had, like truth, but one face only, we should be upon better terms; for we should then take the contrary to what the liar says for certain truth: but the reverse of truth hath a hundred figures, and a field indefinite without bound or limit. A. Hill. Deceit is the false road to happiness; And all the joys we travel through to vice, Like fairy banquets, vanish when we touch them. Landon. One half our forebodings of ill to our neighbors, are but our wishes, which we are ashamed to utter in any other form. Fair words are only a cloak for foul actions. In Dei nomine incipit omne malum; or, All evil begins in the name of God. Lavater. He has not a little of the devil in him, who prays, and bites. Colton. It often happens both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together, a main plot, and an under plot; and he who the dupe of both. DECEIT, GUILE, HYPOCRISY. 129 understands only one of them, is liable to be Ed. Unless he be conducting a counter plot, that will swallow up both. Dissimulation in youth is perfidy in old age. Many persons talk like philosophers, and live like fools. Finesse, a science which honest men have no desire to learn, practise, or teach. Take heed of a bullock before, a mule behind, and a man who has once showed his cloven foot, on all sides. Jeremiah. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it? David. Surely every man walketh in a vain show. Ed. Nothing, save "the depths of Satan," can compete with human deceitfulness. When men are under the dominion of selfishness, they always set up idols in their hearts — have some sensual lusts to gratify some personal end to accomplish some enemy, opponent, or rival to punish some corrupt popular favor and influence to gain some mischievous propensity to gratify, or, in short, some kind of self-interest or gratification to seek and secure, at the expense of public virtue, the public good, or the glory and kingdom of God. Here lies the foundation for both self-imposition and popular deceit. These unworthy objects, sought as an end, soon become magnificent.— Objects magnify by receiving improper attention and affection. Transgressors thus become dupes of their own idols, and bring to their aid a blinded conscience. Then, most conscientiously too, like Saul of Tarsus, they will carry their idols, ends, aims, feelings, piques and prejudices, into their common dealings with men, into their conversation and intercourse, their friendship, morals, manners, religion-into their letters, books, pamphlets, preaching, praying, law-making and governing, professional and private business, in short, into everything. And they will twist, shape, modify, and turn everything to account, in furthering their mischievous objects, with cunning and deceit enough to make themselves laughing-stocks to all interested or close observers. Such, the deceitfulness of sin, such, human nature. "Lord, what is man!" [See 438.] Em. Reading and conversing upon a subject will never make a man master of it, without close and steady thinking, and a fair and full decision. And no man can make a fair and full decision upon any abstract or intricate point, until he has thoroughly examined it on all sides. Hence the importance of attending to but one subject at a time, and of not leaving it before we come to a satisfactory decision. Wirt. Decision of character will often give to an inferior mind the command over the superior. 210. DECLENSION HASTENS. Witherspoon. As human things are never at a stand, so a church or nation, in a quiet and peaceable state, is always growing insensibly worse, till it become either so corrupt as to deserve and procure exterminating judgments, or, in the infinite mercy of God, by some great shock or revolution, is brought back to simplicity and purity, and reduced as it were to its first principles. Wayland. The whole history of man has exhibited a constant tendency to moral deterioration. Hence the earliest ages of nations have been called "the golden age," and subsequent ages have been of brass, or of iron. In the early ages of national existence, sparseness of population, mutual fear, and universal poverty, have obliged men to lay the foundations of society in principles of justice, in order to secure national existence. But, under such a constitution, as soon as wealth was increased, population become dense, and progress in arts and arms have rendered a nation fearless, the anti-social tendencies of vice have shown themselves too powerful for the moral forces by which they have been opposed. 211. DECLENSION, RELIGIOUS. Col. Johnson. Our Government knows no religion. Ed. With equal truth, the Col. might have added, "nor morality." Ed. Neology, Phrenology, Geology, and even Theology, have become a good deal crazed, since the death of our intellectual luminaries, who gave such remarkably clear and scriptural instructions upon the First Cause. Second causes, human |