THE SUICIDE
Back to Zion's Pilgrim
As my friend uttered these words, a crowd of people ran across the street in which we were walking, which excited our curiosity to inquire into the cause. The information was a sad one—A rash youth, it seemed, unable to brook the various disappointments which a long pampered habit of poor parenting had induced, dared to defy Omnipotence, by putting an end to his earthly existence! The crowd was running to behold the unhappy object.—As for me and my companion, we both stood motionless, struck with horror.—At length my friend recovered himself, and broke silence. "Holy Lord," he cried, "what a dreadful world is this, through which your people are passing! How close we walk on the confines of everlasting misery, while in the very moment we are the monuments of your saving mercy!—Blessed God," he exclaimed, "write, I beseech you, that solemn truth upon my heart, Those who are kept, are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation."
"Oh, what a lesson is here, my brother," he cried, "for the sorrowful mother whom we just now noticed! And what would this young man's parents give (for perhaps he may have both to survive him) had her case been theirs!"
My heart was too full to reply. I felt all that kind of sensation which the poet entered into, to the contemplation of a subject so hopeless and awful, when he said,
Then if it be a dreadful thing to die,
How horrid yet to die by one's own hand!
Self murder!—name it not!—dreadful attempt!
Just reeking from self-slaughter, in a rage,
To rush into the presence of our Judge!
As if we challenged him to do his worst,
And valued not his wrath!—'Tis mad!
'Tis worse than madness—nothing can describe
A phrenzy half so desperate as this! (Blair's Grave.)
It was some time before I prevailed on myself to move from the spot of this awful scene—but at length I caught the arm of my companion, and we walked away together towards the end of the street, which terminated in the fields. We had gone a considerable space without any conversation, the minds of both being, I imagined, fully absorbed in ruminating on a subject that was, beyond all others, the most distressing! For my part, the circumstance had awakened in my bosom a train of thoughts which tended to dissipate all my new-formed hopes. "What," I said to myself, "if an end so horrible should be at length the termination of my pilgrimage! What if all my fond desires of grace, should ultimately prove a delusion? Are the people of God exposed to such overwhelming temptations of the enemy? May they really be awakened to the life of God in the soul—and yet finally fall away?"
I found these, and the like distrustful questions involuntarily arising in my mind, and inducing much anxiety, when my friend, as if privy to what passed within me, broke silence—"How gracious," he exclaimed "is our God, in the midst of such awful judgments as are walking by our side through the world—to keep us unhurt! Do you not perceive the evidence of that Scripture, 'A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you—only with your eyes shall you behold and see the reward of the wicked.' (Psalm 91:7, 8.) Oh, it is a blessed, soul-reviving thought—that amid all the melancholy proofs around us, that we are passing through the enemy's territories, that there is a gracious nevertheless in the covenant which screens us from his malice! 'Nevertheless,' says the Apostle, 'the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knows those who are his.' (2 Tim. 2:19.) 'Let mine outcasts dwell within you, Moab—be a covert to them from the face of the spoiler.' (Isaiah 16:4.)
This is enough. Outcasts, and sometimes considered as the 'off scouring of all things,' they are; but still they are God's outcasts. Tempted they may be, and certainly will be—but conquered they shall not be; and could an onlooker but see objects spiritually, he would discover, as the impious monarch of old did, "One walking with his people in the hottest furnace, that even the smell of the fire may not pass upon them." (Dan. 3:25, 27.)
"You very much rejoice my heart," I replied, "by what you say. My fears were all alive in the view of this awful scene, lest an event so truly hopeless might one day be my portion."
"That," answered my companion hastily "is impossible to a child of God. The promise is absolute. 'No weapon formed against you shall prosper.' (Isaiah 54:17.) And God 'is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above that you are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape; that you may be able to bear it.'"
"But is it not said," I replied "that some who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and been made partakers of the Holy Spirit—have fallen away?"
"Yes," replied my companion, "but none of those so spoken of were ever children of God, or 'born again of that incorruptible seed which lives and abides forever.' Only observe the vast distinction of character by which those enlightened people whom the apostle speaks of are marked, from the Scripture-features of the truly regenerate, and the contrast will immediately appear. They are said to be 'once enlightened,' that is, with head-knowledge; not renewed in heart-affections. They are described as those who have tasted of the heavenly gift; tasted but not approved, like people whose stomachs nauseate what the taste rejects, and digest it not. They are said to 'have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit;' that is, in his common operations upon the understanding, not in his quickening and regenerating grace in the soul. In all these and the like instances, there is not a single syllable said of the Spirit's work in the great and essential points of faith and repentance, and the renewed life. But the whole account is confined to the common operations of nature, as distinguished from grace, in which natural men frequently excel, and sometimes indeed to such a degree, as to surpass in head knowledge children of grace; and God the Holy Spirit is pleased to work by their instrumentality, while they themselves remain unconscious of his power.
He blesses his people by them; but they feel not his power in them; for rather than his household should lack supply, he will feed them even from the table of their enemies. They become therefore like channels of conveyance, which conduct to others—but retain nothing themselves; or like the signposts on the road, which point the traveler to the right path—but never stir themselves a step towards it.
These things may be done, and perhaps very often are done by men who are total strangers to vital godliness; and therefore when they cease to appear in their assumed character, they are said by the world to have fallen away from grace; whereas the fact is, they were never in grace. Everything in such people is derived from natural causes, is supported by natural means, and adopted for natural purposes—and thus beginning in nature, they end in the same. And if a proper attention was paid to these things, to discriminate between nature and grace, it would, under the divine blessing, very much tend to diminish the apprehensions of the humble and fearful believer, respecting the danger of apostatizing from the faith."
"But is there not a difficulty," I said, "to the cordial reception of this doctrine, in the cases of those unhappy people who die by their own hands, and, as is generally supposed, from the effects of religious melancholy?"
"Not the least," replied my friend, "by those who consider the subject in a proper point of view. It is the grossest mistake to ascribe such instances of suicide to a religious melancholy, when, in fact, they are induced altogether from the total absence of true religion.
"Men, from the awakenings of conscience, and from the dread of divine displeasure, in the recollection of a mis-spent life, may be driven to despair; and, if there be no grace given to them by God, to make application of the sweet promises of the gospel in the hour of temptation—but left to themselves, may be prompted to do an act at which nature shudders! But who would presume—but a fool, to put this down to the score of true religion, when every circumstance tends but to prove the very reverse—in the total lack of all true religion? Let us only suppose a case in point, which is enough at once to answer all the childish observations which the world has made on a subject of this nature. Let us suppose a man under the immediate pressure and alarms of a guilty conscience, in the prospect of the wrath to come, feels the rising temptation to do away with himself.
Let us suppose further, that in this distressed state of mind, some precious revelation and promise of the gospel is, through divine grace, revealed to his heart; that he hears and believes what the gospel graciously proclaims, that 'Though his sins are as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow; though red as crimson, they shall be as wool; that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin.' Is it not evident, that if the mind of such a man is brought to believe in this precious promise, there can be no despair, and consequently there can be no self-murder? And will prejudice itself, even the grossest prejudice, venture to say, or even believe, that a single instance of suicide was ever committed under such circumstances?
"Hence therefore, you see my brother," continued my friend, "it is not faith—but the lack of faith; not from true religion—but from the total absence of true religion—that a melancholy pervades the mind, which sometimes terminates so fatally as in self-destruction."
Back to Zion's Pilgrim