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If ever a culture needed to hear a message about the value of human life, our nihilistic 21st century America would be at the top of the list. Today’s post constitutes a witness from the past three centuries of American Presbyterian sermons and essays on the topic.
18th Century - Hugh Knox (1733-1790), “The Value and Importance of a Child,” Essay 58 in The Moral and Religious Miscellany; or, Sixty-One Aphoretical Essays, on Some of the Most Important Christian Doctrines and Virtues (1775):
The moment in which a rational, immortal spirit animates a human foetus, a spark is kindled which shall never be extinguished. The materiąl sun will grow old, wax dim with years, and be probably put out as a lamp that burneth; the stars shall fall from their orbits, and be covered with darkness; but this breath of the Almighty, this intellectual spark once kindled up in the moral world, ſhall burn on with undiminiſhed and ever increasing lustre, as long as God himself endures.
The birth of a child we deem to be but a trifling event, and look with indifference, perhaps with contempt, on the little helpless stranger. But if we viewed it with the penetrating eye of reason; if we considered it as emerging from eternal night into life immortal; — as an heir of worlds unknown, and a candidate for an everlasting state; — as a glimmering spark of being, just struck from nothing by the all-creating rock, which must burn and flame on to eternity, when suns and stars have returned to their native darkness or non-entity; — which must survive the funeral of nature, and live through the rounds of endless ages; which must either rise from glory to glory, ascending perfection’s scale by endless gradations, or sink deeper and deeper into the bottomless abyss of misery, and to which its immortality must either prove an unsufferable curse, — or a blessing inconceivable, according to the manner in which it shall have acquitted itself in its present probationary state — we shall clearly discern, that the value and importance of a human infant can scarcely be computed.
19th Century - Henry Augustus Boardman (1808-1880), The Low Value Set Upon Human Life in the United States: A Discourse Delivered on Thanksgiving-Day, November 24th, 1853 (1853):
It is impossible to frame any suitable conception of the value of life , or of the criminality of abridging its duration , without viewing man as an immortal being. The moment this idea is admitted into the inquiry, it overshadows everything else. The pains of dissolution, the pang of parting, the blighted hopes, the sorrows of widowhood and orphanage, the destruction of the vital spark , and whatever of grief and woe we may be accustomed to associate with the name of death considered simply as a temporal event — all becomes insignificant when we think of its future issues. It is the dismission of an individual from time into eternity. It is the sending him to the bar of his Maker. It is a terminating of all his opportunities for repentance and reformation . He is, thenceforth , done with the Bible and the throne of grace , with Sabbaths and sermons, with offers of pardon and tenders of reconciliation , with the Saviour's invitations and the Spirit's strivings, — all these are finished . He goes to appear before the “ great white throne,” and to receive his award of everlasting life , or of shame and everlasting contempt.
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There is nothing over which the Deity has reserved to himself a more implicit control than life and death. “The Lord killeth and maketh alive; he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up.” “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal.” As He alone can give life, so no creature may take it away without His permission. The wilful destruction of it, He has not only forbidden in the decalogue, but marked with His special abhorrence, by requiring every murderer to be put to death. And, as if to set forth in a yet more emphatic way, His estimate of the sacredness of life, and of the enormity of extinguishing it, he required even the involuntary homicide, among the Hebrews, to be tried; and if proved innocent, he was still treated as a quasi-prisoner, and prohibited, on pain of death, from quitting the city of refuge during the life of the high-priest. If further proof were wanting of the value He sets upon life, it offers itself to us on every side, in the various and inexhaustible provision He has made for its nurture and protection; in the antidotes He has prepared to the diseases sin has introduced; and above all, in the infinite love He has displayed towards our race in sending His be loved Son into the world to redeem us.
These are all His mercies. We are responsible to Him for the use we make of them. It is for Him to say how long, and under what circumstances, we shall enjoy them. Upon our conduct here, “everlasting things” are suspended. This is our probation; heaven and hell hang upon it. Nor is this all. We are so implicated with one another, that we are all helping to determine each other's characters and destiny. Our life or death may seriously affect, for good or ill, the welfare of a nation, or the prosperity of the church. Nay, we are even allowed to say, that the glory of God Himself, the ever-blessed and incomprehensible Jehovah, may have some connexion with our longer or shorter continuance here.
20th Century - Theodore Ledyard Cuyler (1822-1909), The Value of Life (1908):
Life is God’s gift; your trust and mine. We are the trustees of the Giver, unto whom at last we shall render account for every thought, word and deed in the body.
In the first place, life, in its origin, is infinitely important. The birth of a babe is a mighty event. From the frequency of births, as well as the frequency of deaths, we are prone to set a very low estimate on the ushering into existence of an animate child, unless the child be born in a palace or a presidential mansion, or some other lofty station. Unless there be something extraordinary in the circumstances, we do not attach the importance we ought to the event itself. It is only noble birth, distinguished birth, that is chronicled in the journals or announced with salvos of artillery. I admit that the relations of a prince, of a president and statesman, are more important to their fellow men and touch them at more points than those of an obscure pauper; but when the events are weighed in the scales of eternity, the difference is scarcely perceptible. In the darkest hovel in Brooklyn, in the dingiest attic or cellar, or in any place in which a human being sees the first glimpse of light, the eye of the Omniscient beholds an occurrence of prodigious moment. A life is begun, a life that shall never end. A heart begins to throb that shall beat to the keenest delight or the acutest anguish. More than this — a soul commences a career that shall outlast the earth on which it moves. The soul enters upon an existence that shall be untouched by time, when the sun is extinguished like a taper in the sky, the moon blotted out, and the heavens have been rolled together as a vesture and changed forever.
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What is the purpose of life? Is it advancement? Is it promotion? Is it merely the pursuit of happiness? Man was created to be happy, but to be more — to be holy. The wisdom of those Westminster fathers that gathered in the Jerusalem chamber, wrought it into the well-known phrase, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” That is the double aim of life: duty first, then happiness as the consequence; to bring in revenues of honor to God, to build up His kingdom, spread His truth; to bring this whole world of His and lay it subject at the feet of the Son of God. That is the highest end and aim of existence, and every one here that has risen up to that purpose of life lives.
The truth spoken by these voices is timeless, just as every being made in the image of God is of eternal worth. May today’s generation give heed to these witnesses to the value and dignity of human life from centuries past.
