Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/285

 pointed at the very extirpation of forms and ceremonies,—the erection of a pure, rational, spiritual dominion in the hearts of mankind, so that the blessings of a glorious faith, which for two thousand years before had been confined to the limits of a ceremonial system, might now, disenthralled from all the bonds of sense, and exalted above the details of tedious forms, of natural distinctions, and of antique rituals,—spread over a field as wide as humanity. For this he lived and toiled, and in the clear hope of a triumphant fulfilment of that plan, he died. And if, from his forgotten, unknown grave, among the ashes of the Chaldean Babylon, and from the holy rest which is for the blessed, the now glorified apostle could be called to the renewal of breathing, earthly life, and see the results of his energetic, simple-minded devotion,—-what wonder, what joy, what grief, what glory, what shame, would not the revelation of these mighty changes move within him! The simple, pure gospel which he had preached in humble, faithful obedience to the divine command, without a thought of glory or reward, now exalted in the idolatrous reverence of hundreds of millions,—but where appreciated in its simplicity and truth? The cross on which his Master was doomed to ignominy, now exalted as the sign of salvation, and the seal of God's love to the world!—(a spectacle as strange to a Roman or Jewish eye, as to a modern would be the gallows, similarly consecrated,) but who burning with that devotion which led him of old to bear that shameful burden? His own humble name raised to a place above the brightest of Roman, of Grecian, of Hebrew, or Chaldean story! but made, alas! the supporter of a tyranny over souls, far more grinding and remorseless than any which he labored to overthrow. The fabled spot of his grave, housed in a temple to which the noblest shrine of ancient heathenism "was but a cell!" but in which are celebrated, under the sanction of his sainted name, the rites of an idolatry, than which that of Rome, or Greece, or Egypt would seem more spiritual,—and of tedious, unmeaning ceremonies, compared with which the whole formalities of the Levitical ritual might be pronounced simple and practical!

These would be the first sights that would meet the eye of the disentombed apostle, if he should rise over the spot which claims the honors of his martyr-tomb, and the consecration of his commission. How mournfully would he turn from all the mighty honors of that idolatrous worship,—from the deified glories of that sublimest of shrines that ever rose over the earth! How