This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[98]
of his list, with small sums opposite to them.
“What are these?”
asked the good Doctor.
“Those at the top,” said Jackson, “are your regulars, and those below are my militia.”
On examining the names, they were found to be those of the free blacks of the quarters, all of whom he had visited in their humble dwellings, and encouraged to give a pittance of their earnings to print Bibles.
He argued that these small sums were better spent thus than in drink or tobacco; that the giving of them would elevate their self-respect, and enhance their own interest in the Holy Book; and that they being indebted to it as well as others, should be taught to help in diffusing it.
There was another trait of his religious character so conspicuous, that it demands here full illustration,--his constant recognition of a particular Providence.
No man ever lived who seemed to have a more practical and living sense of this truth of Christianity.
He earned, indeed, thereby, the title of superstitious, from some of the unthinking, and of fatalist from others.
But he was neither: his belief in the control of Divine Providence was most rational and scriptural.
The only difference between him and other enlightened Christians here was, that his faith was “the substance of things anticipated, and the evidence of things not seen;” while theirs is, so largely, an impractical theory.
That doctrine is, that God's special providence is over all his creatures and all their actions, to uphold and govern them; and that it is over His children for their good only.
By that omniscient and almighty control all events are ordered, permitted, limited, and overruled.
There is no creature so great as to resist its power, none so minute as to evade its care.
But yet, by a mode which is perhaps beyond the cognizance of the human reason, it secures the action designed by God's intelligent purpose, from each created agent, in strict conformity with its nature and powers.
The Christian doctrine
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.