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SERMON II.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PAST.

"That which hath been is now."-ECCLES. iii. 15.

"THAT which hath been "-how suggestive is the phrase! how impressively does it appeal to the memory and the imagination! sending us back, as it does, to the times of old, and conjuring up before our minds the shades of the mighty dead, and the ancient glories of the world. "That which hath been!"-we feel as if we were amid the mounds of grey Nineveh, or beside the colossal monuments of Egypt. An august procession seems to sweep by of thrones and dynasties, of priests and mythologies, of hundred-gated cities and world-wide empires. And as we gaze upon the visionary pageant, and wonder while we gaze, there evermore comes over us this other and sadder feeling, "They are gone-they and their glory; gone, like a dream when one awaketh."

Nor is the past without its impressive associa

tions, when limited to the brief period we ourselves have lived. Setting out of view the public events of our time, how much is there in the bygone personal history of each of us to waken up painful, or at least pensive, reflection? Our childhood sports, our youthful studies, our later pursuits and conduct, all wear another and graver colour, now that they are past. To think that they are gone-yon early years of sprightliness and hope; that they are past recall-yon neglected but precious seasons of self-culture and usefulness; that they are acts accomplished, and cannot be annulled, yon “deeds of folly, sin, and shame”—who can so think without a gush of emotion? Oh, the course of our life-voyage, when seen in our wake behind us, does bear quite another aspect than it did on our passage through it! A solemn thing it verily is to have a past!

But in recalling "that which hath been," our thoughts ought not to rest exclusively on the fact that the agents, actions, opportunities, events, are gone-are off the scene, and away. This is but one side of the subject, and not the most instructive one. Though the past is in one sense dead and gone, yet in another sense it still lives. It still lives in the present-it still lives in its effects upon the present. The present is not only what the past has left it, but what the past has made it. There is a transmigration of soul from the

dead past into the living present. “That which hath been is now."

This survival of the past in the point which I design to illustrate.

present is the

And in order

to impress it on your minds, as well as pave the way for some practical inferences, I shall take you, for examples of its truth, to the three cases of nations, churches, and individuals.

I. In the case of nations, the influence of "that which hath been" in fashioning "that which is now," is too palpable to be overlooked by any student of history. A nation which has no past may be free to adopt any form of polity, any code of laws, any conventional usages, it chooses. But no such course is open to a nation which has long enjoyed a distinct subsistence and a settled government. It belongs to transmitted and longestablished usages to interweave themselves with the whole texture of the popular mind, and thus to become part and parcel of the national life. What is it that has left it open to the Americans to frame their republican institutions in some sort of accordance with their abstract theory of political rights? What, but the absence from their history of a past? What is it, again, that has rendered every recent attempt at democratic government on the continent of Europe a signal failure? What, but the presence of a past? Your san- .

guine theorist may succeed in establishing his favourite polity in a new country, where everything is fresh and of yesterday. But in an old country the popular tastes and associations are too deep-seated to be swept away by the mere act of passing a bill of rights, or proclaiming a republic. Aided, indeed, by some popular grievance, or national disaster, or other like appliance for inflaming the passions and hopes of the multitude, he may so far succeed as to be able for a time to remove the ancient landmarks, and clear a space for the erection of his new political structure. But it will be only for a time. The mould in which long ages have cast the national mind is too fixed and stubborn to yield permanently to his theories. As soon as the short fever of revolutionary excitement is over, the old national tastes will revive-the conservative feeling will return the ancient institutions will resume their place and their prestige. And in the sudden and utter shipwreck of his utopian commonwealth, your mortified projector will be forced to read the great truth, that the present is fast moored to the anchorage of the past.

It would be beside my purpose to detail the various things which moor a nation to its past. Yet this general remark may be ventured, that these moorings are not so much the direct and definable influences of public law and govern

ment, as those deeper and subtiler influences which appeal to the imagination and the heart. Just as the youthful mind is formed less by the direct instruction of parents and teachers, than by the incidental, insensible, ceaseless operation of example, companionship, outward circumstance -those "unappointed preceptors whose school hours are all the days and nights of our existence"-so the national mind receives its form and pressure mainly from the myriad nameless things in an old country, which tell on the feelings and fancy of its inhabitants. The very

memorials and monuments of its past history foster a conservative sentiment. In every grey ruin, telling of the olden time; in every old church-tower peering above the trees; in every tale and tradition of national prowess and glory, -there is an incitement to reverence for the past. In short, it is through the feelings rather than the reason that the past acquires and maintains its plastic influence over a community. And hence the only men qualified to legislate for an old country are those who know the spirit of the past, and sympathise with the time-rooted tastes and associations of the people. Your speculative fanatic who ignores the past is utterly incompetent for the task. And as to his visionary system of society and government, it has but to be set up in the shape of an actual experiment, in order to