Religion Considered as Leading to Comfort and Happiness
“Young men away from home must have some thing,” you are ready to say, “to interest, to amuse, to gratify them. They have been called to sacrifice the comforts of their father’s house, and to endure many hardships, and much discomfort, and need something to enliven and divert their minds.” True. But it should be of a kind that would not endanger their health, their morals, or their future interests, and especially their souls. To seek relief from the labours of business, the gloom of solitude, or the annoyance of an unpleasant domicil, by “the pleasures of sin, which are but for a season,” is to recruit our wearied nature, and to enliven our dull frame, by drinking a sweet tasted and effervescing draught of deadly poison. That young man is not only not pious, but scarcely acts the part of a rational creature, whose love of diversion leads him to seek such gratifications as are ruinous to all his interests for time and eternity. A love of pleasure, a taste for amusement, as such, is a most dangerous propensity. Business, young man, business, is what you should attend to. There is pleasure in industry. Employment is gratification. But still you repeat, “We must have something to interest the mind when business is over; which shall be a subject of hope and mental occupation, to fill up the interstices of thought during the day, and that shall be an object to which the mind may constantly turn for refreshment and relief amidst all that is disgusting and disheartening in the rough cares of our situation.” Well, here it is! Here is a glorious object! Here is what you want, just what you want, and all you want. RELIGION, religion, my reader, will prove to be, if you try it, an engaging companion, a sympathizing comforter, an ever present friend, and a sure guide to the fountain of happiness. Do not listen to the ignorant testimony of those who have never tried it, and who represent it as the enemy of human delight; but attend to the intelligent witness of those who speak from experience, and who declare it to be the very element of happiness. Who would take the evidence of a blind man about colour and form; or of a deaf one about sounds; or of one without the sense of taste about flavour? And equally irrational would it be to take the opinion of an ungodly man about religion.
It is a truth, which the experience of millions has proved, that “Wisdom’s ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” Consider what religion is: not mere bodily exercise, a drudgery of mere forms and ceremonies: no, but an occupation of the mind and heart; an occupation, too, which engages the noblest contemplation
132 COMFORT AND if APPINESS.
of the former, and exercises the purest affections of the latter. It is the employment of the whole soul upon the sublimest object that mind can be conversant with. Mental occupation is essential to felicity, and here it is in perfection and permanence. Dwell upon the privileges of religion: the pardon of sin; the justification of our persons; the favour of the eternal God, together with the consciousness of that favour, and communion with Him; peace of conscience, like the sunshine of the breast; the renovation of our corrupt nature; and the subjection of passion, appetite, and animal propensity, to rules which revelation prescribes and reason approves: and all this united with the hope, and prospect, and foretaste of eternal glory. I ask, can the man whose mind is in this state be otherwise than happy? I wish to impress you with the idea that the individual who is thus religious, whose piety is scriptural, evangelical, experimental; and not superstitious, nominal, and ignorant, — must be happy; not indeed perfectly so, for that belongs exclusively to the heavenly world; but he is contented and satisfied, as being in a state of repose. His mind is not anxiously and ignorantly urging the question, “Who will show us any good?” He has a definite idea of what will make him happy; he is not in quest of something to occupy his mind and satisfy his heart, but has found it, and is at rest. He has become possessed of a supreme object of interest, which his heart loves, and his conscience approves, an object which has many and great advantages; it is always at hand, for it is WITH him, yea, in him. He proves the truth of the assertion, “The good man shall be satisfied from himself;” because the spring of his happiness is in his own bosom. He is calm and tranquil: his pleasures are not only pure, but peaceful; they occasion no perturbation, no painful reflection, no remorse; they are unexpensive; they do not unlit him for business, nor create in him a disgust with his trade or profession, but brace and invigorate him to carry on its labours, and endure its cares; they do not impair his health or enervate his mind, but are all of a healthful nature, both as regards the body and the soul.
Religion, moreover, includes duties that are all agreeable. The love of God, the service of Christ, the practice of holiness, the destruction of sin, the cultivation of charity, are all pleasant. The Christian, in keeping holy the sabbath in the house of God, enjoys far more delight than he who desecrates it by Sunday excursions. The reading of the Bible, if it does not fascinate the imagination, and kindle the passions, like a novel or licentious poem, soothes and softens, and sanctifies the heart. Prayer is one of the most elevating exercises in which the soul can be engaged, for it is man speaking to God; the poor frail, finite child of dust and ashes, admitted, through the mediation of Christ, to an audience with the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise
God. And as to the pleasures of friendship, where are they enjoyed in such perfection as in the communion of saints?
Nor is this all; for religion supplies an inexhaustible source of the deepest interest, in the various great and glorious institutions which are formed, and in operation, to promote the moral, spiritual, and eternal welfare of mankind; to many of these, young men are contributing, in different ways, their valuable assistance. I can with confidence ask, whether the polluted and polluting scenes of earthly pleasure, to which many resort, can yield half the satisfaction which is enjoyed at public meetings of religious institutions, where interesting facts unite to captivate the imagination and delight the heart: at the festive scene of a tea-party, held by a company of Sunday-school teachers, or by the collectors of a juvenile missionary society, or the members of a society for mental improvement, there is more real enjoyment than in any of those sinful diversions in which men of corrupt taste find their amusement. The great moral enterprize for the conversion of the world, now carrying on its operations through all lands, supplies an object of unrivalled sublimity, splendour, and importance, and which, by firing the ambition, and employing the energies of youthful piety, never fails to be productive of pure delight, as often as the eye contemplates it, or the mind is conscious of promoting it.
I remember, once when I was leaving my home, which I had visited for a short season, my mind was pensive and sad, as I contrasted the comforts I had left with the disagreeable circumstances to which I was returning. My heart was swelling with its sorrows, as I rode slowly along, till religion came to my relief. “God,” I said, “is in every place; I am going away from my father’s house, but I am not going from my God.” This thought seemed like the bow of mercy upon the cloud of my dark and troubled thoughts; I put spurs to my horse, and went on my way rejoicing. I was also returning to a beloved circle of religious friends, and to the duties of a Sunday-school, which had already engaged my heart.
I may truly say, that as regards myself, in a situation in many respects uncomfortable to the last degree, so that my heart often sickened as I rose from my bed, to contemplate the duties of the coming day, religion, then newly gained, was almost my only comfort; and a comfort indeed it was to me. To what sources of amusement I might have repaired but for this I tremble to think, as memory turns back upon the scenes of my youth. Before Divine grace had changed my heart, I was fond of the theatre, but religion came to my aid, with all its holy and peaceful enjoyments, and then I found a consolation under every annoyance, and a source of enjoyment which rendered many things tolerable that would have been otherwise hard to bear.
Blessed with true piety, a youth may be happy any, and everywhere. The apprentice, serving the most tyrannical master, or oppressed by the most unfeeling and hard-hearted mistress, will still find, if he possesses religion, a relief sufficient to lighten the yoke and soften the rigours of the service. And how will it cheer the solitude of the clerk or the shopman in his private lodgings, when neither friend nor companion is near! There he can commune with his God, and pray to his heavenly Father, though his earthly one be far from him. He is not now tempted to leave his cheerless dwelling in quest of comfort, for he can find enough in religious exercises: or if he wishes, as he lawfully may do, to relieve his solitude, he can be happy ‘in hearing a sermon, or going to the meeting of some committee with which he is connected, or*to the public meeting of some society which may be held in the neighbourhood. Solitude itself is not disagreeable, for he wishes to cultivate his mind by knowledge, and his hean by piety; and when exchanged for social inter course and pleasures, these are of a kind to do him not harm, but good. Religion thus makes him comfortable whether alone or in society. Young man, I want you to be happy, and I am sure there is only one thing that will make you so, and that is, true piety. You may be amused and gratified, pleased and diverted, at least for a while, without this; but amusement and diversion are only substitutes for happiness, not the thing itself. Man was made for the service and enjoyment of God, and he cannot be truly happy till he is brought to answer the end of his creation. How important, then, is it, that you should begin life with correct views of this subject! How much misery will it save you from, to mind religion young! A course of iniquity must, sooner or later, end in misery. Even while the pleasures of sin last, they are sadly mixed with the warnings, perturbations, and reproaches of conscience. Sin is a hard master, and Satan’s service is often a galling yoke. Religion will save you from all this, and impose in its place-a yoke which is easy, and a burden which is light.
Who can tell what sorrow awaits him in future life? Oh, could I lift up the vail of futurity, and disclose the scenes of your history, how would your heart sink to foresee the trials that are in serve for you. Setting out upon the voyage life, with a bright sky, a smooth sea, a fair wind, and every sail filled with the propitious breeze, you may soon have to encounter the storm that shall reduce you to a wreck on some inhospitable shore. Your trade may fail, your wife may die, and your constitution sink under the pressure of accumulated woes. What is there to comfort and support you amidst solitude, and the long, dark, wintry night of adversity? Religion, had you sought it in the season of youth and health, would have helped you to sustain the shock of misfortune by its consoling and strengthening in- ’ 12* fluence; but you have neglected it, and in its absence there is nothing human or Divine to support you, and you fall, first, into poverty, then to drinking, then to the grave, and then to the bottomless pit. How many who have died of a broken heart, or as martyrs to drunkenness, and have gone from the sorrows of time to the torments of eternity, would, if they had possessed religion, not withstanding their misfortunes, have lived in peace, died in hope, and been blessed for ever! Religion, if it led only to misery upon earth, if it were really the gloomy and pleasure-destroying thing which many represent it, and others believe it to be, yet, as it leads from everlasting misery to eternal bliss hereafter, would be our highest as well as our incumbent duty; for who would not escape from hell and flee to heaven, if it could only be done by passing through Cimmerian shades, or a perpetual martyrdom? but instead of this, true piety is the most serene and delightsome thing on earth. It is the sweetener of our comforts, the softener of our cares, the solace of our sorrows. It deprives us of no enjoyment but what would injure us, and gives other and far better ones in place of those it takes. It is the spring flower of youth, the summer sun of our manhood, the autumn fruits of our declining years, and the lunar brightness of the wintry night of our old age. It is a verdant, quiet, secluded path to the paradise of God, and, after giving us the light of his countenance in life, the support of his grace in death, will conduct us to his presence, where there is fulness of joy, and to his right hand, where there are pleasures for ever-