The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-10-06
MODERN SADDUCEEISM.

1t is strange enough that faith and love should
have waxed so chill and dead among the .IeSat
resurrection and the very being of angels and of
spirits but stranger far that Christians should
be sunk SO low in cold, unfeeling torpor, as to
live forgetful of the world unseen. Alas how
awful is the chaStisement which follows on If
reverent handling of holy things Our fore
fathers boldly ventured in within the veil, and
troubled the sleep of the saints with importu-
nate invocations and thrust upon the followers
of Him who sought to hide Himself when men
would have come to make Him a King, offices
and dignities in Gods Kingdom, of which the
prerogative is Gods only. And from these
first bold steps they passed on to prying curl.
osity into the secrets Of Gods hidden world, and
must needs mete out the measures and condi-
tons of the holy and unholy dead, and leave
little known to God alone, but know all things
even beyond His revelations and before His
time; and in the realms of the unseen they grew
bewildered, and thought they saw horrible
phantoms, which Knocked them into a belief of
their own fevened imaginations. And on these
they built up lying doctrine, and beguiled
men, by still more lying practice, and the
commemoration of the saints, into snare. And
from this, by not unnatural recoil, what they
over-fondly doated on we have forgotten. The
superstition of ages has recoiled into the Saddu-
ceesm of to-day. / am not speaking of free
thinkers, but Of good, earnest people. They so
overlook the time between death and resurrec-
lion, as virtually to shut it out of their belief;
they make it almost a test of sound doctrine, to
leave out all teaching of the unseen state. With
the entire book of the Apocalypse before their
eyes, of which Except the last two chapters)
the whole relates to the lifetime Of this visible
world, and the parallel state of waiting and
alteration in the world invisible, they think a
cold reserve the surest token of illuminated
faith, Not, indeed, when sorrow breaks upon
them, and loved ones pass into the paradise OF
God; then love, and nature, and truth, are too
strong for them and the instincts and affections
Of their newborn hearts, long pent up In a
forced and Unnatural constraint, come down In
full tide upon them, and carry them over the mar
row bounds Of their unsympathizing theology.
4 riven heart is the best exposition of Gods
teaching about the saints asleep. Few have
ever sorrowed, and missed learning mysteries
of consolation. Sometimes, alas, this is not so.
The habitual inconsistencies of an unseen
world in which even good men have been con-
tent to live, SO insensibly deadens the quick
ness of the spiritual perceptions, that the heavi
est sorrow leaves upon their hearts but shall
low and short-ived impress of the intermediate
state. For while, their affections follow the
departing spirit; and it may be they think their
hearts will never return to this rough world, but
dwell within the veil forever. In little time
the first visions of the realities unseen, be they
never so vivid, begin to fade into colder light;
and realities soften off into shadows. and
shadows melt into films, and from films they
draw themselves into notes and this, world and
all the going on of life and the hurryings to
and fro of every day. and the emptiness Of
home, and the loneliness of night, and the re-
turning sadness of the morrow, so throng about
a man, and first lower upon him, and then set
tie heavily upon him, that many give back from
their first feelings, and unbnd their resolutions
and shrink from the severe life of walking alone
on the brink of the world unseen. The end Of
this is, that they become again for the mos
part what they were before; humber, and per
haps more softened, more tender; on the whole
more religious, but still entangled IN the neal
and sensible things of this earthly life. And
thus, it may be, they make forfeit of hidden
blessings which God has rendered them. They
choose a fall home rather than an empty one
fellowship rather than loneliness, a lower rather
than higher level in the life Of God.
But though it may be found even in better
men, the fullsadduceeism of the day is to be
in the great mass of less earnest minds
lot too much to say that in little while
| d forgotten the dead. Of course, there
| an pms warm hearts viii always cling
| by e ntary and almost unconscious fond
! nes1 memory of the departed. But here
g. tHsevefy difference it is to their memory,
not to their fellowship to what they were, moi
| to what they are. They look back on them,
i and remember their poor, struggling humanity,
! the;r life of earth their body of humiliation