The Chief End of Life # 5

The Chief End of Life # 5

But perhaps you ambition takes a lower aim, a narrower range, and you have set your highest mark in DOMESTIC HAPPINESS, and feel that in obtaining a comfortable home, and sharing it with the woman of your choice and of your love, you would reach the summit of your ambition, and neither look nor wish for anything beyond. This, in subordination to true religion is a wise moderation, a modest ambition. But, put in lieu of piety, it is a groveling and earthly one. How soon, if acquired, may that little earthly paradise be broken up by the intrusion of poverty or death! Besides, what is so likely to secure this object as the once we recommend? It is only over the lovely scene of a pious household that the beautiful strain of ancient poetry may still be poured, "How goodly are your tents, Jacob, and your tents, Israel! As valleys they are spread forth, as gardens by the riverside, as aloes which Yahweh has planted, as cedar trees beside the waters."

Tested then by itself and an examination of its own characteristics, and also by contrast with everything that may be put in competition with it, true religion proves itself to be what it really is, and we ourselves have found it to be - the chief end, the chief good, and therefore the chief business of life. 

To assist each other in the pursuit of this object we, who send forth this address, are associated in brotherhood and in fellowship. The purpose of our association is not scientific - that may be sought, and should be sought, in other associations. Neither is it political, on this subject we have our opinions, and as they may in some measure differ, we do not discuss that thorny topic. Nor is it commercial, we gain our knowledge of everything connected with trade by solitary reading and attending to our business, whatever it may be, in the scene of our daily occupation. Nor, we can truly aver, is it sectarian, for we are members of different communities of Christians, who, without sacrificing or compromising our conscientious convictions and usual practices, have agreed to unite for a common object, upon the basis of great principles avowed by us all, and are held to each other by the bond of brotherly kindness and charity. We had already learned from many proofs around us, the possibility of union without compromise, and now have experienced, "how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." It is our conviction that no sentiments ought to keep professing Christians from uniting with each other in some way, which do not keep them from union with Christ.

We say, then, to you, as Moses did to his father-in-law, "We are journeying to the place of which the Lord has said, I will give to you. Come you with us, and we will do you good; for the Lord has spoken good concerning Israel." And we think that it would be happy for you, if you would reply in the language of Ruth to Naomi, "Where you go I will go - your people shall be my people, and your God my God."

It is not our chief aim, however, to draw you within the circle of our hallowed association, as we deem it, for this would do you no good, nor would it promote the end of our union, or be in accordance with its laws, unless you were first drawn to God through faith in Jesus Christ. It is this latter end which is our main object. Having found out the blessed secret that genuine religion is the young man's safest guide, as well as surest bliss, we long to impart the secret to you, and to lead you to the well-spring of pure felicity. As we have already said - once we were ignorant of this, but the eyes of our understanding are now opened, and in the fullness of our adoring wonder, gratitude, and love, we feel that we cannot more worthily magnify God, for His grace to us, or more acceptably serve Him - than by an endeavor to make you the sharers of our bliss.

There is nothing more certain than death; there is nothing more uncertain than life. "Youth is as mortal as the elderly." Presume not on long life. 

But now turn to another spectacle, we mean that of an individual who has lived out his fourscore years, and died at last without true religion. He may have acquired wealth and left his family in affluence; he may have got for himself a name, and obtained a niche for his statue in the temple of fame; he may have gained respect for his talents while he lived, and for his memory when dead; and he may have even left a rich legacy to posterity, in works of public usefulness. But inasmuch as he neglected to glorify God by a life of religion, he lived in vain as regards the eternal world. The sublime end of existence was lost; and in the first moment of his waking up in another world, he would exclaim, "I have lost my life, for I have lost my soul!" He has committed a fatal mistake which require an eternity to understand - and an eternity to deplore! From that mistake may God in His great mercy preserve us, by bringing us with clear intelligence, deliberate resolution, inflexible purpose, and prayerful dependence - to adopt and ever maintain the apostle's choice of an object of existence, and say, in reference to the salvation of our immortal soul - this thing I do!

~John Angell James~

(The End)