424

PROGRESS GEOMETRICALLY INCREASING, ETC.

must here, withal, exhort you to take heed what you receive as truth. Examine it, consider it, and compare it with other scriptures of truth, before you receive it; for it is not possible that the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick, antichristian darkness, and that perfection of knowledge should break forth at once. [See 792.]

750. PROGRESS, GEOMETRICALLY INCREASING. Every holy aspiration and effort elevates man's moral nature, and renders his upward progress more easy.

Ed. When all counteracting causes, occasioned by sin, shall be removed, the growth of the minds of saints will resemble the growth of vegetables. Our Saviour compared the kingdom of heaven to a grain of mustard seed, which, the more it increases, the more it is capable of drawing upon the resources of the earth. Its progress, in extension and weight, is much greater the second month than the first, the third, than the second. This thought, however, is too overwhelming for this, our embryo state, and I will not swell the illustration.

Young. The more our spirits are enlarged on earth,

The deeper draft will they receive from heaven.

751. PROGRESS, RELIGIOUS.

Boston paper, 1851. The balance of actual progress of religion and irreligion, has been such, that if the same ratio of religious progress, compared with the progress of population, is continued another fifty years, the whole immense population of the country will have become members of evangelical churches. And dark as is the picture in England, probably similar remarks might there apply. When Christ compared the progress of his kingdom to the spread of leaven, and to the growth of a grain of mustard seed, he set forth a principle, which is every day having countless verifications in religious progress. Ed. If the whole world comes into the evangelical churches within fifty years, by the kind of progress now in fashion, what will be the type of the popular evangelism of 1902 of the Christian era?

752. PROGRESS, INVERSE.

Puritan Rec., Feb. 26, 1852. Thirty-four thousand minis

ters of the Gospel are wanted, that Zion may hold her own. They are wanted to supply the thirty-four thousand organized churches of evangelical faith in our land, that are now destitute. [Vide, a pamphlet on the progress and prospects of Christianity in the United States, by Dr. Baird, printed in London, last year.] We say nothing of breaking ground at home or abroad, and nothing of the duty and necessity of keeping pace with the natural and foreign increase of our population, which is about two thousand a day. We say nothing of a supply for vacancies, by death, and other causes. We want this number, to supply an existing deficiency. It is a mournful prospect for Zion, when she suffers under such a want as this. And if we turn for relief to our forty theological seminaries of the evangelical denominations, we are discouraged. They graduated, in 1850, about twelve hundred candidates for the ministry. From this number we must take about 800 a year to fill vacancies by death. On the remnant, a heavy draft is made for professors and religious agents, editors, and teachers. Many of the residue go to foreign fields, take charge of new churches in the old states, or form them in the new. Few remain toward our thirty-four thousand.

Besides, theological students do not increase with our population as they should. In six of our principal theological seminaries in New England, there were but eight more students in 1849, than there were twenty years before. Yet, during that time, our population has increased ten millions. In all our theological seminaries, connected with Congregational and Presbyterian churches, there were, in 1850, fewer students by seventy, than in 1840. And yet, in these ten years, our population increased six millions, and our territory one million of square miles. [See 77, 211, 468.]

753. PROLIXITY.

Ideas overloaded with words, seldom travel far or long.

Ed. Prolixity-the dialect of nothingarians.

Ib. A prolix speaker is more tedious than the hills of Ba

shan.

426

PROMISES, PROMPTITUDE, PROPENSITIES.

754. PROMISES, PROMISING.

Prudence in promises, is a fair guarantee in the redemption of them.

Henry. They who are conscientious in keeping their promises, will be cautious in making them.

Men promise according to their hopes, and perform according to their fears.

A fair and flattering promise catches the fool.

Sh. Some men will promise more in a minute, than they will stand to in a month.

Let your promises be sincere, within the compass of your ability, and partake largely of the sacred and inviolable.

Ed. Wicked promises · - bad things in their origin abominable things to keep, and sometimes bitter things to break. Ib. Expect nothing from him who promises too freely, or him who will not promise.

755. PROMPTITUDE.

A stitch in time, saves nine.

Ed. Promptitude is a branch of politeness and good manners. It is highly favorable to fortune, reputation, and usefulness, and costs only a little attention and energy to form the habit, to make it easy and delightful. [See 770.]

756. PROPENSITIES.

Our power of passive sensation is weakened by the repetition of impressions, while our active propensities are strengthened by the repetition of actions.

Ed. Propensity to sin-something criminal, hateful, and worthy of punishment. It is a positive transgression of the law of God, and consists in the habitual bent, choice, or inclination of a sinning moral agent. We cannot predicate a sinful propensity upon a mere agent, or upon any kind or quality of existence, prior to moral agency, as the ground or reason of the first sinful action. Whoever attempts to define sinful propensity, as distinct and separate from the actual choice or inclination of a moral agent, will make a failure. [See 632.]

PROPHETS, PROSPERITY.

757. PROPHETS, PROPHETIC.

427

The present is prophetic of the future, in proportion as it is impregnated with the past.

Ed. Self-constituted prophets are dupes of the adversary.

Ib. Prophets who please men, presage their own destruction; and those who prophesy evil upon others, because they wish them evil, predict their own doom.

758. PROSPERITY.

Nothing is so hard to bear as prosperity.

Prosperity makes friends; adversity tries them.

Tacitus. Prosperity is the touch-stone of virtue; for it is less difficult to bear misfortunes, than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure.

A smooth sea never made a skilful mariner; neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify men for usefulness and happiness.

Em. Prosperity elevates mankind above measure, and never fails, more or less, to blind their eyes, pervert their judgment, and divert their attention from the most plain and important objects. It often makes them think, and sometimes makes them say, "I shall never be moved."

Ib. God greatly smiled upon Hezekiah, and highly distinguished him, by both temporal and spiritual favors. In consequence of this, he began to imagine he was good enough, and wise enough, and strong enough, to direct his own steps, and had no occasion of leaning upon the Lord, and seeking to him for his gracious influence. Good men have often indulged such self-sufficiency, and self-dependence, after they have had peculiar manifestations of Divine favor. This has often been a procuring cause of the withdrawment of the Divine presence and influence from them. God has withholden his comforting, or quickening, or gracious influence from them, to teach them their folly and guilt in forsaking him. This is a very proper and effectual way to bring them to a proper sense of their weakness, dependence, and desert of the Divine displeasure.

When prosperity was well mounted, she let go the bridle, and soon came to the ground. [See 823, 991, 993.]

428

PROTECTION DIVINE, PROVIDENCE.

759. PROTECTION DIVINE. Henry. Those only go under God's protection, who follow his direction.

Ed. While mankind are disobeying, dishonoring, and forgetting God, he is protecting their lives, their health, their rights and privileges, their good name, their friends, and all things they most highly prize and enjoy. "Hear, O heavens! give ear, O earth!" etc.

760. PROVIDENCE, UNIVERSAL.

Ed. The providence of God is that mysterious power, that "Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent,

Breathes in our soul, sustains our mortal part,

As full, as perfect in a hair as heart;

To him no high, no low, no great, no small;

He fills, he bounds, connects and equals all.”

Whelpley. The uniform operation of the laws of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, the regularity and grandeur of the heavenly motions, all evince the presence and energies of a universal providence. With equal clearness may the same be seen in the rise and fall of nations, and, in fact, in the various concerns of human life.

Those who observe the providences of God, have wonderful things to observe.

Ed. A universal and particular providence is one of the most sublime contemplations that ever entered the mind of man, and is therefore favorable to intellectual development. Perhaps no truth is better adapted to awaken moral inquiry, and arouse the mind from stupidity. In a most emphatical sense, it is "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness." It is the glory and happiness of Jehovah, that he can work all things after the counsel of his own will, while the hearts of creatures devise their way. It is the perfection of his government, that it is both moral and providential. This is the distinguishing feature of the true God, in opposition to all false divinities, and was exhibited to Cyrus, to show him the contrast. Universal Divine agency is