SERMON XXX.

THE DOCTRINE OF PROBATION.

DEUTERONOMY VIII. 2.

THE LORD THY GOD LED THEE THESE FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS, TO HUMBLE THEE, AND TO PROVE THEE, TO KNOW WHAT WAS IN THINE HEART, WHETHER THOU WOULDEST KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS OR NO.

THE parallel has often been drawn between this journey of the Jews in the desert and the journey of life. Our minds are familiar with the imagery thus employed, and we assent continually to the justice of the resemblance, even in many of the more minute particulars. Perhaps in nothing does it more justly hold than in regard to probationary character. Each is a state of trial, discipline, education, preparation for something further. "The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no." In these same words may

the

purpose

and character of human life be described. I propose, therefore, to discourse on human probation. It is a word which describes the condition of man, and helps to explain much in the economy of Providence and the phenomena of our earthly being, which ordinarily seems enveloped in mystery. The doctrine of probation, properly

applied, may be regarded as a key alike to the doctrines of religion and the dispensations of Providence. Both in a speculative and a practical view, therefore, it may well be a subject of interest.

The design of the present discourse is to show what is meant when we call life a state of probation, and to justify and apply this great doctrine.

Let me ask you to bring up to your minds this thing which we call life. Let your observation, your imagination, and your memory set before you the picture of this earthly existence. It begins in helplessness, dependence, exposure. The infant is the feeblest and least helpful of all things. It proceeds in exposure, imperfection, sorrow, temptation, guilt. The child goes forward in the midst of hazards innumerable, buffeted, caressed, decoyed, misled, through a long vicissitude of enjoyments and distresses. Youth follows, with new exposures, new penalties; passions, duties pressing; hope, ambition, self-confidence impelling; distrust, despondency, pain, and a thousand influences from the character and fortune of childhood throwing their light or their shadow on the whole present and the whole future. With all mankind, in all ages, there is but a repetition of the same phenomena — each individual weighed down with burdens of care and shame, weakness and grief accumulated from past errors; or lighted with peace, cheerfulness, and selfcontent reflected from past right conduct or successful enterprise every period alike, childhood, youth, age, wedded to what went before, chained to what is to follow, in an indissoluble series of causes and consequences, is a perpetual mixture of opposite ingredients-happiness and misery, good and evil. To the casual eye it might seem a chaotic disarrangement, a mighty maze, and all without a plan," (as the poet described it, in his first draft of his poem,) without

order, without progress, without purpose, without end. So some have regarded it. So the cynical and misanthropic are always disposed to represent it. But without plan, purpose, or end, it cannot be, unless we are ready to say it is without a governor. If there be an almighty and wise Creator and Ruler, and that there is all Nature cries aloud through all her works, and her voice is heard bearing testimony above all the din of the confusion, then there must be a purpose. Therefore the seeming confusion must be seeming only. Order is his first law, and the hidden order must be capable of being exhibited to those who shall diligently seek it.

But what is this purpose? Not happiness-there is too much palpable wretchedness to permit us to dream that enjoyment is the object of this present existence. If we were to suppose it so, we should be compelled also to admit that the object had been defeated; that the great Father had been unable to secure to his offspring the felicity he had proposed. We see, indeed, beneficent design, but not singly nor clearly, in all things.

Neither is it retribution. There is too much of beauty, and loveliness, and holy satisfaction, and sweet enjoyment, to permit us to account this a place of exile, a colony of aliens and convicts. Love, peace, purity, devotion, have their home here. Blossoms of paradise hang upon the thorny branches, and the innocent dove broods amid the wastes. In a word, the design could not have been the execution of retribution, for that design is not answered. A thousand wrongs go unrebuked and unavenged; and a thousand souls, that once were devoted to wrong, have, without signal punishment, by repentance, reformation, and faith, been able to find this a tranquil and satisfying home.

If neither a place of enjoyment nor of retribution, what

remains, but that it be a place of preparation, of duty, of trial? What else is signified by that very assemblage of heterogeneous and discordant elements which have been noticed the uncertainty, the vicissitudes, the entanglements? Why else are they all fashioning such a complicated and enigmatical scene, except in order that the human being, cast into the midst, driven to and fro, tossed from side to side, influenced all ways by all circumstances, should thereby be tested, so as to prove what manner of stuff he is made of, and what manner of creature he will become, "led forty years through this wilderness to humble him, and to prove him, to know what was in his heart, whether he would keep God's commandments or no." This explains the strange position. This clears up the mystery. The brief joy; the maddening sorrow; the dismaying calamity; virtue wronged and trodden upon; vice prosperous; imprudences dealt with as sins; an iron chain of causes and effects; an inexorable law of the physical and moral nature, punishing the man with scorpion lashes for the follies of the boy; and Heaven sometimes hiding its face, apparently alike to the sufferings of the good and the return of the penitent; - all these things, inexplicable to the unbeliever and the ungodly, are proofs to the trusting and faithful, that this is only a state of trial, preparatory to a final state, and that all that is appointed here is but preliminary to the final adjustment hereafter. Principle is to be tested. Character is to be tried. The soul is to be thus educated. By rightly bearing the trials, rightly enduring the temptations, rightly struggling with obstacles, it improves its virtue, it shakes off its earthly corruptions, fits itself for a holier land, and is, at last, ready to pass over the Jordan of death into the glorious inheritance beyond; or, failing in all this, sinks and perishes in the desert, and has no part in the promised consummation.

Learn a parable of the Jews when led forth from Egypt. They were to be led into a distant country, to take possession of it, and become a prosperous and sovereign nation. But they must first be fitted for such a situation and work; and by their long bondage they have been rendered totally unfit; the spirit has been broken, the character debased; they want the manliness, independence, vigor of mind, which are essential to such an enterprise; and, therefore, as.we see, in pusillanimity and alarm, they all constantly shrink from the hardships of the way, and cry. to return to their comfortable dependence. This character must be changed, or they cannot be fit for the difficulties of subduing the present inhabitants, or for the charge of self-government in the new colonies, and the founding of a great empire. And how shall it be changed? By the discipline of a forty years' wandering in the desert, where they will be tested; their resolution, faith, obedience, devotion tried and strengthened, and those peculiar qualities cultivated by a suitable education, which will fit them for their approaching residence. To them, with their ill-informed minds, their imbecility, short-sightedness, and inexperience, this whole proceeding was a mystery, a maze without a plan. "Why are we brought here in the wilderness to die here?" they cried. And it was not till the way of Providence was indicated by the successful result, that they could recognize the necessity and wisdom of the plan to which they had been subjected. Then they perceived it all clearly; and through all future periods of their history, in psalms of thanksgiving and odes of praise, they celebrated the glory of that dispensation, by which, through trial, the nation had been led home. And just so, though multitudes now complain of the darkness and mystery of this unequal scene yet in the thanksgivings of the eternal world it will also be a topic