Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe With His Vision of the Angelick World

SERIOUS REFLECTIONS DURING THE LIFE...

rant in his own; he appears in a public place of worship for a show, but never enters into his closet and shuts the door about him, to pray to Him that sees in secret; he is covered with the vainglorious and ostentatious part of charity, but does all his alms before men, to be seen of them; he is mighty eager in the duties of the second table, but regardless of the first; appearingly religious to be seen and taken notice of by men; but between God and his own soul no intercourse, no communication. What is this man? and what comfort is there of the life he lives? He knows little, or perhaps nothing, of faith, repentance, and a Christian mortified life; in a word, he is a man perfect in the circumstances of religion, and perfectly a stranger to the essential part of religion.

Take this man’s conversation apart, enter into the private and retired part of it, what notions has he of misspent hours, and of the natural reflux of all our minutes, on to the great centre and gulf of life, eternity? Does he know how to put a right value upon time? Does he esteem it the life-blood of his soul, as it really is, and act in all the moments of it, as one that must account for them? Alas! this is of no weight with such a man; he is too full of him self to enter into any notions about an account, either for misspent time, or anything else misdone; but persuading himself that he never did anything amiss, entertains no notion of judgment to come, eternity, or anything in it.

What room has a man to expiate, in his thoughts upon so immense and inconceivable a subject as that of eternal dura-

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tion, whose thoughts are all taken up, and swelled top-full with his own extraordinary self? It would be impossible for any man in the world to entertain one proud thought of himself, if he had but one right idea of a future state. Could such a man think that anything in him, or anything he could do, could purchase for him a felicity that was to last to eternity? What! that a man ‘should be capable in one moment (for life is not that in length compared to eternity) to do anything for which he should deserve to be made happy to eternity?

If, then, you can form no equality between what he can do and what he shall receive, less can it be founded upon his negative virtue, or what he has forborne to do; and if neither his negative nor his positive piety can be equal to the reward, and to the eternity that reward is to last for, what then is become of the Pharisee? he must think no more of himself, for all his boasts; neither of his negatives nor his positives, but of a rich unbounded grace, that rewards according to itself, not according to what we can do; and that to be judged at the last day according to our works, if literally understood, would be to be undone; but we are to be judged by the sincerity of our repentance, to be rewarded according to the infinite grace of God, and purchase of Christ, with a state of blessedness to an endless eternity.

Indeed this eternity is not a meditation suitable to the man I am talking of; ‘tis a sublime thought, which his bloated imagination has never descended to or engaged in; and when it comes he is like to have as little comfort of it as he has had thought about it.

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This thought of eternity raises new ideas in my mind, and I cannot go forward without a digression upon so important a subject; if the reader approves the thought, he will not quarrel about its being a digression.

ETERNITY

Hail! mighty circle, unconceived abyss, Centre of worlds to come, and grave of this; Great gulf of Nature, in whose mighty womb,

Lies all that thing called Past, that nothing called To come.

Ever and never, both begun in thee, The weak description of eternity,

Mere sounds which only can thy being confess; For how should finite words thee infinite express? Thou art duration’s modern name,

To be, or to have been, in thee are all the same.

Thy circle holds the pre-existent state Of all that ‘s early, or that shall be late.

Thou know’st no past or future; all in thee, Make up one point, Eternity:

And, if things mortal measure things sublime, Are all one great ubiquity of time.

To end, begin, be born, and die, The accidents of time and life,

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Are nonsense in thy speech, Eternity Swallows them all, in thee they end their strife. In thee the ends of Nature form one line,

And generation with corruption join.

Ages of life describe thy state in vain, Even death itself, in thee, lives o’er again.

Thy radiant, bright, unfaded face, Shines over universal space.

All limits from thy vast extent must flee, Old everlasting ‘s but a point to thee, Ten everlastings make not one Eternity.

To thee things past exist as things that are; And things to come, as if they were;

Thou wast the first great when, while there was yet no where.

Even time itself ‘s a little ball of space, Borrowing a flame from thy illustrious face, Which, wheeling round, in its own circle burns,

Rolls out from thy first spring, and into thee returns.

What we have been, and what we are, The present and the time that ‘s past,

We can resolve to nothing here, But what we are to be in thee at last.

Deeds soon shall die, however nobly done,

And thoughts of men, like as themselves decay; But time when to eternity roll’d on,

Shall never, never, never waste away.

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Years, ages, months, weeks, days, and hours Wear out, and words to number them shall fail,

One endless all the wild account devours, And thy vast unit casts up all the tale.

Numbers as far as numbers run Are all in thy account but one,

Or rather are thy reck’ning just begun.

Thou art the life of immortality,

When time itself drowns and expires in thee. All the great actions of aspiring men,

By which they build that trifling thing called lame, In thy embrace lose all their where and when,

Reserving not so much as a mere empty name.

How vain are sorrows of a human state, Why mourn th’ afflicted at their fate? One point, one moment ‘s longer far

Than all their days of sorrow shall appear,

When wrapt in wonders we shall see, And measure their extent by thee.

In vain are glorious monuments of fame, Which fools erect t’ immortalise a name,

Not half a moment when compared with thee, Lives all their fancied immortality.

Start back, my soul! and with some horror view, If with these eyes thou can’st look through, Inquire what gives the pain of loss a sting,

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Even hell itself’s a hell, in no one other thing.

Then with a brightness on thy face,

An emanation from that glorious place, A joy which no dark cloud can overcast, And which Eternity itself cannot outlast,

Reflect, my soul! Duration dwells on high,

And heaven itself ‘s made heaven, by blest Eternity.

But to the purpose in hand, for I have not done with this man of negatives yet. And now let us bring him more nearly and seriously to a converse with the invisible world. He looks into it with horror and dreadful apprehensions, as Felix, when St. Paul reasoned of temperance, righteousness, and of judgment to come. Felix was a moral heathen, that is to say, a man of negatives, like him I am speaking of. What was then the case? He trembled. Pray, what is it reasonable to think Felix trembled at? If I may give my opinion, who am but a very mean expositor of texts, it was this or something like it.

Felix was a philosopher as well as a man of power; and by his wisdom, as also by his reverence of the gods, which at that time was the sum of religion, had been a man of morals, a man that had practised temperance and righteousness, as the life which was unquestionably to be rewarded by the powers above with an Elysian felicity, that is to say, according to the Roman maxim, that the gods were the rewarders of virtue.

But when the blessed Apostle came to reason with Felix how unlikely it was that these negatives should purchase our

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happiness hereafter, he showed him that the gods could not be in debt to us for the practice of virtue, which was indeed no more than living most suitable to our reason; that a life of virtue and temperance was its own reward, by giving a healthy body, a clear head, a composed life, &c., fitting the man for all other worldly enjoyments adequate to his reason and his present felicity as a man. But eternal happiness must come from another spring, namely, from the infinite, unbounded grace of a provoked God, who having erected a righteous tribunal, where every heart should be searched, and where every tongue would confess itself guilty, and stand selfcondemned. Jesus Christ, whom Paul preached, would separate such as by faith and repentance He had brought home and united to Himself by the grace of adoption, and on the foot of His having laid down His life a ransom for them, had appointed them to salvation.

When poor negative Felix heard of this, and that all his philosophy, his temperance, and righteousness, if it had been ten thousand times as great, would weigh nothing and plead nothing for him at that judicature, and that he began to see the justice and reason of this, for Paul reasoned him into it; I say, when he saw this, he trembled indeed, as well he might, and as all negative people will.

What a strange idea must that Pharisee have of God, who went up with the publican to the temple to pray. ‘Tis observable he went with a good stock of assurance in his face that could come to the altar as he did, not to offer any sacrifice; we do

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not find he carried any offering, or bespoke the priest to make any atonement; he wanted no priests to make any confession to. Good man, as he thought he was, he had no sins to confess; he rather came up to the altar to even accounts with heaven, and like the other man in the Gospel, tell God that he had fulfilled the whole law, and had done all those things that were commanded, even from his youth; so, as before, he only pulled off his hat to his God, and let Him know that there was nothing between them at present, and away he goes about his business.

But the poor wretch whom he despised, and whom he had left behind him, for he durst come no further, acted quite another part. He had at first, indeed, in sense of his duty, resolved to go up to the temple; but when he saw the splendour and majesty of God represented by the glory of that elevated building, I say, when he saw that, though a great way off, and then looked into his own heart, all his negative confidences failing him, and a sense of miserable circumstances coming upon him, he stops short, and with a blow of reflection, and perfectly unmixed with any of the Pharisee’s pride, he looks down in humility, but lifts up his heart in a penitential faith, with a “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.”

Here was faith, repentance, duty, and confession, all conjoined in one act, and the man’s work was done at once, he went away justified. When the negative Pharisee went home, the self-same vain wretch that he came out, with “ God, I thank thee,” in his mouth, and a mass of pride in his heart, that nothing could convince.

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In what glorious colours do the Scriptures upon all occasions represent those two hand-in-hand graces, faith and repentance!

There is not one mention of faith in the whole Scripture but what is recommending some way or other to our admiration and to our practice; ‘tis the foundation and the top-stone of all religion, the right hand to lead and the left hand to support, in the whole journey of a Christian, even through this world and into the next. In a word, ‘tis the sum and substance of the Gospel foundation.

Religion seems to have been founded upon three establishments in the world, in all which the terms of life are laid down at the end of our acceptance of it.

The first establishment was with Adam in Paradise; the terms of which were, “Forbear and live.”

The second establishment was with the children of Israel, in the giving of the Law; the terms of which were, “Do and live.”

The third establishment is that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the terms of which are, “ Believe and live.”

So that, in a word, faith is the substance and fulfilling of Gospel religion, the plan of righteousness, and the great efficient of eternal life. Let me break out here upon this glorious subject, and pardon the excursion, I entreat you.

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FAITH

Hail! mystic, realising vision, hail! Heaven’s duplicate, eternity’s entail; God’s representative to hand us on,

And for us claim a station near His throne.

Not the eternal battlements of brass,

Gates, a whole hell of devils could never pass; Not angels, not the bright seraphic train, Which drove out Adam from the sacred plain; Not all the flaming swords Heaven ever drew, Shall shut thee out, or intercept thy view.

Boldly thou scalest the adamantine wall, Where heaps of fainting suppliants fall,

Where doubt has thousands and ten thousands slain, And hypocrites knock hard in vain.

Soaring above the dark abyss of fear,

Quite out of sight, behind thou leav’st despair, Who fainting, and unable to keep pace,

Gives up the prize, gives out the race, Faints by the way, and fainting cries, I can’t, and so for fear of dying, dies.

While thou, on air of hope, fanning thy wings,

With gentle gales of joy, from whence assurance springs, Mount’st on, and passing all th’ aethereal bounds, Thy head

with beatific rapture crowns.

Great pilot of the soul, who goes before

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