THOUGHTS ON

CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE.

BY THE REV. J. GARDNER, M. D. AND A. M.

THE individual responsibility of man is a subject fraught with interest, possessed as he is of talents, and opportunities, and privileges, for the use or the abuse of which he is accountable to God, but the view of his responsibility becomes wider and more impressive, when we reflect upon the intimate connection in regard to moral influence which subsists between him and his fellowmen. In this sense "no man liveth to himself," for by his whole deportment, he is ope

rating with an unseen though a direct agency upon the minds and the moral feelings of all with whom he is connected. Hence it is

that the character of every man is to some extent modified by the dispositions and conduct of those whom he admits into close and habitual intercourse; and though in its grand and palpable features, his moral constitution may not for a time appear to have undergone any remarkable change, the fact has been often exemplified in the world, of an individual so gradually yet powerfully influenced by evil example, in the secret springs of thought and of action, that its baneful effects at length become visible in his whole external deportment.

Human responsibility is not merely founded, however, on the openly avowed influence of example, whether beneficial or injurious; there is also a secret imperceptible influence, which all our opinions, and words, and actions, have upon human beings the most remote from us, either in space or time. To affirm that any one individual, even the humblest and the most obscure, shall exert a de

cided influence upon the population of this globe, long after his body shall have been committed to the dust, may perhaps appear extravagant, but it is not the less true; and equally undeniable is the fact, that the character and opinions of the same individual, unacquainted though he be with the geographical position and characteristic manners of distant nations, may modify in no slight degree the opinions and habits of some, nay, perhaps, of all their inhabitants. It is not only the man whose deeds, whether heroic, or useful, or benevolent, emblazon the page of history that operates with moral power on the mass of this world's inhabitants, for every, even the smallest integral portion of this mass, possesses in itself a power to modify the whole. Every individual is operating upon every other individual; and not only has each his own peculiar sphere over which he communicates the influence, whether beneficial or otherwise, of his own example, but there is also a more extensive system with which he is as intimately, though not perhaps so obviously connected—a sys-`

tem, including the men of every age and of every clime. To these he communicates his own share, however minute, of peculiar opinions, and expressions, and habits, and customs. A little reflection will satify us as to the truth of this remark; and in illustration of it, select an individual from the humblest, and what are termed the most uninfluential classes of society. He has his own sphere, however limited, within which his own dispositions, and feelings, and habits are incessantly operating upon those around him. These peculiarities received from him by his relatives and associates, communicate in turn to all within their sphere, for each individual, is as it were, the sun of his own system, and thus it is that every step we proceed, the problem of our moral responsibility becomes more intricate, until it exceeds the limits of our finite comprehen.. sions. The idea is vast, but it is of awful importance; it teaches us how every man shall be judged-not as a mere isolated being, but as connected with the men of all ages and of all countries. He who is the

Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, will look along the whole series of human beings who have inhabited our globe from the creation to the consummation of all things, and ascertain with unerring certainty the actual condition of each man in point of responsibility.

Let these remarks be duly weighed, and the Christian cannot fail to discern the reasonableness and propriety of "walking honestly towards them that are without." His character stands out as it were in bold relief from the multitude of his fellow-mortals around him, the majority of whom are impelled by motives and principles of action essentially different from his own. From the exalted station in society which the believer occupies as a "light of the world," he is too often an object of suspicion and jealousy to the inconsiderate and ungodly, and professing as he does, to feel the power of those doctrines which are "according to godliness," an argument is readily deduced from his occasional errors, by the enemies of the cross, in vindication of their wickedness and contempt of the gospel.