But change the order of circumstances.Remove these external helps,--substitute therefor sorrow, duty, the revelations of our own inner being,--and all this gayety vanishes like the sparkles from a stream when a storm comes up.The soul that has depended upon outward congenialities for its happiness has no permanent principle of happiness; for that is the distinction which religion bestows.He who cannot retire within himself, and find his best resources there, is fitted, perhaps, for the smoother passages of life, but poorly prepared for all life.He who cannot and dare not turn away from these outward engrossments, and be in spiritual solitude,--who is afraid or sickens at the idea of being alone,--has a brittle possession in all that happiness which comes from the whirl and surface of things.One hour may scatter it forever.And poorly, I repeat, is he prepared for all life,--for some of the most serious and important moments of life.These, as I shall proceed to show, we must meet alone, and from within; and therefore, it constitutes the blessedness of the Christian religion that it enables man when in solitude to have communion, consolation, and guidance.In fact, it makes him, when alone, to be not alone,--to say, with glad consciousness, "I am not alone, because the Father is with me."To illustrate this truth, then, I say, that so far as the communion and help of this outward world and of human society are concerned, there are many and important seasons when man must be alone.In the first place, in his most interior and essential nature, man is a solitary being.He is an individual, a unit, amid all the souls around him, and all other things,--a being distinct and peculiar as a star.God, in all the variety of his works, has made no man exactly like another.There is an individual isolation, a conscious personality, which he can share with no other; which resists the idea of absorption; which claims its own distinct immortality; which has its own wants and woes, its own sense of duty, its own spiritual experiences.Christianity insists upon nothing more strongly than this.Piercing below all conventionalisms, it recognizes man as an individual soul, and, as such, addresses him with its truths and its sanctions.Indeed, it bases its grand doctrine of human brotherhood and equality upon the essential individuality of each man, because each represents all,--each has in himself the nature of every other.It demands individual repentance, individual holiness, individual faith.One cannot believe for another.One cannot decide questions of conscience for another.One cannot bear the sins or appropriate the virtues of another.It is true, we have relations to the great whole, to the world of mankind, and to the material universe.
We are linked to these by subtle affinities.We are interwoven with them all,--bound up with them in arterial unity and life.They have all poured their results into our souls, and helped to form us, and do now support us; and we, in like manner, react upon them, and upon others.This truth is a vital one, not to be neglected.But a deeper truth than this and one upon which this depends, is the individual peculiarity of each,--his integral distinctiveness, without which there would be no such thing as union, or relationship;nothing but monotony and inertia.
The great fact, then, which I would impress upon you is, that, essentially as spiritual beings, we are alone.And Iremark that there are experiences in life when we are made to feel this deep fact; when each must deal with his reason, his heart, his conscience, for himself; when each is to act as if the sole-existent in the universe, realizing that he is a spirit breathed from God, complete in himself, subject to all spiritual laws, interested in all spiritual welfare; when no stranger soul, though it be that of his dearest friend, can intermeddle with all that occupies him, or share it.
Such experiences we have when reflection binds us to the past.Memory then opens for us a volume that no eye but God's and ours can read;--memories of neglect, of sin, of deep secrets that our hearts have hidden in their innermost folds.Such experiences sometimes there are when we muse upon the external universe; when we reflect upon the vastness of creation, the littleness of human effort, the transciency of human relations; when our souls are drawn away from all ordinary communions, and we feel that we are drifting before an almighty will, bound to an inevitable destiny, hemmed in by irresistible forces.Then, with every tie of association shrinking from us; then, keeping the solitary vigil; then with cold, vast nature all around us, we are alone.Or, there is a solitude which oppresses us even in the heart of the great city;--a solitude more intense even than that of naked nature; when all faces are strange to us; when no pulse of sympathy throbs from our heart to the hearts of others when each passes us by, engaged with his own destiny, and leaving us to fulfil ours.In this tantalizing solitude of the crowd, in this sense of isolation from our fellows, if never before, do we feel, with sickness of heart, that we are alone.There is a solitude of sickness,--the solitude of the watcher or of the patient,--a solitude to which, at times, duty and Providence call us all.There are, in brief, countless circumstances of life when we shall realize that we are indeed alone, and sad enough will be that solitude if we have no inner resource,--no Celestial companionship;--if we cannot say and feel as we say it, that we are not alone, for the Father is with us.
But, while I cannot specify all these forms of solitude, let me dwell upon two or three of the experiences of life in which we are peculiarly alone.
