Meditation LXXI.

ON SEEING SLAVES AT WORK.

Leghorn, April 10, 1759.

To what hard circumstances are some fellow-creatures reduced! These poor men are in bondage, without any expectation of freedom until death delivers them. Are not their heavy burdens and severe labor punishment enough, without dragging the iron chain, which, locked about their ankles, links them two by two, or couples them like dogs together? and yet, as if all this were not severity enough, see the armed soldiers attend them everywhere!

O sinners! Satan deals far worse with you—and yet you will not leave his service, his slavery, and become Christ's free men.

Whence is it that the men of the world, the sons of vice, think the saints of God shackled and confined, and that themselves only are free. They assume the title of libertines and free-thinkers, when indeed they are fettered drudges, narrow souls, and slaves of Satan? The saints, and they alone, walk at liberty, being ransomed from their cruel captivity by price, and delivered by power.

These slaves have hard labor—but a coarse and scanty diet; so, when sinners weary themselves in the fire, they are fed—but with wind; and their belly is filled—but with the whirlwind.

They are under the check and control of soldiers, who are commonly the dregs of society; so the sinner is under the check of the basest passions, under the influence of the most sordid lusts, and sees not his misery.

Satan makes the men who serve him, drag along with them all the signs of slavery, and badges of bondage, which it is possible for them to be loaded with; and they even weary themselves for very vanity. Their pleasures pierce and give pain; their joys are acid, and their enjoyments full of torment.

All that they can possess themselves of, has still a deficiency; and yet they hunt after shadows, and pursue imaginary bliss. Moreover, Satan, like the sentries of these poor slaves, is still pushing sinners on to works of darkness, and the reward at last is more shame, more sorrow, and more torment!

Though these men toil hard all the day, yet at night they have not a soft bed to rest thereon their weary limbs. In the same way, sinners who weary themselves to commit wickedness all their life, at last lie down in sorrow amidst devouring flames!

Indeed these poor creatures have the night allowed for their repose—but sinners often pass the silent night in scenes of darkness, and their very dreams are filled with the rambles of the day.

Again, these are slaves through life—but death unlocks the fetters, and knocks off the chains, and gives them perfect liberty. But with the wicked it is not so, for if grace does not deliver them—death only seals their slavery, and shuts them up in the prison of the bottomless pit! Oh! melancholy truth, that Satan's slaves should be so many, and so content with their sad condition—though death and hell attend its latter end!

[]Meditation LXXV.]]

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