Persons of the deepest penetration are full of doubt and perplexity; their minds are undecided how to act, lest while they pursue one road, they may be neglecting another which might better have conducted them to their proposed In religion the case is different, and, in this respect, easy. As a Christian can have but one object in view, he is also certain there is but one way of attaining it. Where there is but one end, it prevents all possibility of choosing wrong can produce of his rectitude on other occasions, where there is but one road, it takes away all perplexity as to the course of pursuit. That we so often wander wide of the mark, is not from any want of plainness in the path, but from the perverseness of our will in not choosing it, from the indolence of our mind in not following it up. In our attachments to earthly things, even the most innocent, there is always a danger of excess; but from this danger we are here perfectly exempt, for there is no possibility of excess in our love to that Being who has demanded the whole heart. This peremptory requisition cuts off all debate. Had God required only a portion, even were it a large portion, we might be puzzled how large a part we might venture to keep back without absolutely forfeiting our safety; we might be haggling for deductions, bargaining for abatements, and be perpetually coinpromising with our Maker. But the injunction is entire, the command is definitive, the portion is unequi. vocal. Though it is so compressed in the ex pression, yet it is so expansive and ample in the measure: it is so distinct a claim, so imperative a requisition of all the faculties of the mind and strength; all the affections of the heart and soul: that there is not the least opening left for litigation; no place for any thing but absolute unreserved compliance. But what a cine has revelation furnished to the intricate abyrinth wnich seems to involve the conduct which we impiously question! It unrols the volume of divine Providence, lays open the mysterious map of infinite wisdom, throws a bright light on the darkest dispensations, vindicates the inequality of appearances, and points to that blessed region, where to all who have truly loved ano served God, every apparent wrong shall be approved to have been un-in settling the quantum. We might be plotting mpeachably right, every affliction a mercy, and ne soverest trials the shortest blessings. So blind has sin made us, that the glory of iod is concealed from us, by the very means which, could we discern aright, would display t. That train of second causes, which he has vo marvellously disposed, obstructs our view of imself. We are so filled with wonder at the mmediate effect, that our short sight penetrates hot to the first cause. To see him as he is, is eserved to be the happiness of a better world. We shall then indeed admire him in his saints, and in all them that believe; we shall see how necessary it was for those whose bliss is now so perfect, to have been poor, and despised, and oppressed. We shall see why the ungodly were in such prosperity.' Let us give God credit here for what we shall then fully know; let us adore now, what we shall understand hereafter. They who take up religion on a false ground will never adhere to it. If they adopt it merely for the peace and pleasantness it brings, they will desert it as soon as they find their adherence to it will bring them into difficulty, distress, or discredit. It seldom answers therefore to attempt making proselytes by hanging out false colours. The Christian endures as seeing him who is invisible.' He who adopts religion for the sake of immediate enjoyment, will not do a virtuous action that is disagreeable to himself; nor resist a temptation that is alluring, present pleasure being his motive. There is no sure basis for virtue but the love of God in Christ Jesus, and the bright reversion for which that jove is pleaged. Without this, as soon as the paths of piety become rough and thorny, we shall stray into pleasant pastures. Religion, however, has her own peculiar advantages. In the transaction of all worldly affairs, there are many and great difficulties. There may be several ways out of which to choose. Men of the first understanding are not *. certain which of these ways is the best. Every thing which relates to God is infinite. We must therefore while we keep our hearts humble, keep our aims high. Our highest services indeed are but finite, imperfect. But as God is unlimited in goodness, he should have our unlimited love. The best we can offer is poor, but let us not withhold that best. He de serves incomparably more than we have to give Let us not give him less than all. If he has ennobled our corrupt nature with spiritual affec tions, let us not refuse their noblest aspirations, to their noblest object. Let him not behold us so prodigally lavishing our affections on the meanest of his bounties, as to have nothing left for himself. As the standard of every thing in religion is high, let us endeavour to act in it with the highest intention of mind, with the largest use of our faculties. Let us obey him with the most intense love, adore him with the most fervent gratitude. Let us praise him according to his excellent greatness.' Let us serve him with all the strength of our capacity, with all the devotion of our will. Grace being a new principle added to our na tural powers, as it determines the desires to a higher object, so it adds vigour to their activity We shall best prove its dominion over us by dosiring to exert ourselves in the cause of heaven with the same energy with which we once ex erted ourselves in the cause of the world. The In those intervals when our sense of divine world was too little to fill our whole capacity. things is weak and low, we must not give way Scaliger lamented how much was lost because to distrust, but warm our hearts with the recol so fine a poet as Claudian, in his choice of a sub-lection of our best moments. Our motives to ject, wanted matter worthy of his talent; but it is the felicity of the Christian to have chosen a theme to which all the powers of his heart and of his understanding will be found inadequate. It is the glory of religion to supply an object worthy of the entire consecration of every power, faculty and affection of an immaterial, immortal being. CHAP. VIII. The Hand of God to be acknowledged in the daily circumstances of life. IF we would indeed love God, let us 'acquaint ourselves with him.' The word of inspiration has assured us that there is no other way to be at peace.' As we cannot love an unknown God, so neither can we know him, or even approach toward that knowledge, but on the terms which he himself holds out to us; neither will he save us but in the method which he himself has prescribed. His very perfections, the just objects of our adoration, all stand in the way of creatures so guilty. His justice is the flaming sword which excludes us from the Paradise we have forfeited. His purity is so opposed to our corruptions, his omnipotence to our infirmity, his wisdom to our folly, that had we not to plead the great propitiation, those very attributes which are now our trust, would be our terror. The most opposite images of human conception, the widest extremes of human language, are used for the purpose of showing what God is to us in our natural state, and what he is under the Christian dispensation. The 'consuming fire' is transformed into essential love. But as we cannot find out the Almighty to perfection, so we cannot love him with that pure flame, which animates glorified spirits. But there is a preliminary acquaintance with him, an initial love of him, for which he has furnish. ed us with means by his works, by his word, and by his Spirit. Even in this weak and barren soil some germs will shoot, some blossoms will open, of that celestial plant, which, watered by the dews of heaven, and ripened by the Sun of righteousness, will, in a more genial clime, expand into the fulness of perfection, and bear immortal fruits in the Paradise of God. A person of a cold phlegmatic temper, who laments that he wants that fervor in his love of the Supreme Being, which is apparent in more ardent characters, may take comfort, if he find the same indifference respecting his worldly attachments. But if his affections are intense to wards the perishable things of earth, while they are dead to such as are spiritual, it does not prove that he is destitute of passions, but only that they are not directed to the proper object. If, however, he love God with that measure of feeling with which God has endowed him, he will not be punished or rewarded because the stock is greater or smaller than that of some other of his fellow creatures. · love and gratitude are not now diminished, but our spiritual frame is lower, our natural spirits are weaker. Where there is languor there will be discouragements. But we must not desist. Faint yet pursuing,' must be the Christian s motto. ness. There is more merit (if ever we dare apply so arrogant a word to our worthless efforts) in persevering under depression and discomfort, than in the happiest flow of devotion, when the tide of health and spirits runs high. Where there is less gratification there is more disinterestedevidence, that our love may be equally pure We ought to consider it as a cheering though it is not equally fervent, when we persist in serving our heavenly Father with the same constancy, though it may please him to withdraw from us the same consolations. Perse. verance may bring us to the very dispositions the absence of which we are lamenting-'O tarry thou the Lord's leisure, be strong and he shall comfort thy heart.' We are too ready to imagine that we are religious, because we know something of religion. We appropriate to ourselves the pious sentiments we read, and we talk as if the thoughts of other men's heads were really the feelings of our own hearts. But piety has not its seat in the memory, but in the affections, for which however the memory is an excellent purveyor, though a bad substitute. Instead of an undue elation of heart when we peruse some of the psalmist's beautiful effusions, we should feel a deep self-abasement at the reflection, that however our case may sometimes resemble his, yet how inapplicable to our hearts are the ardent expressions of his repentance, the overflowing of his gratitude, the depth of his submission, the entireness of his self-dedication, the fervour of his love. But he who indeed can once say with him, Thou art my portion,' will, like him, surrender himself unreservedly to his service. It is important that we never suffer our faith, any more than our love, to be depressed or elevated, by mistaking for its own operations, the ramblings of a busy imagination. The steady principle of faith must not look for its character to the vagaries of a mutable and fantastic fancy La folle de la Maison, as she has been well denominated. Faith which has once fixed her foot on the immutable Rock of Ages, fastened her firm eye on the Cross, and stretched out her triumphant hand to seize the promised crown, will not suffer her stability to depend on this ever-shifting faculty; she will not be driven to despair by the blackest shades of its pencil, nor be betrayed into a careless security, by its most flattering and vivid colours. One cause of the fluctuations of cur faith is, that we are too ready to judge the Almighty by our own low standard. We judge him not by his own declarations of what he is, and what he will do, but by our own feelings and practices. We ourselves are too little disposed to forgive those who have offended us. We therefore conclude that God cannot pardon our offencen our rational powers, the highest elevation of our spiritual affections! Is it not to be apprehended, that the dread of being driven to this sacred intercourse is one grand cause of that activity and restlessness, which sets the world in such per We suspect aim to be implacable, because we, course, which demands the live.iest exercise of are apt to be so, and we are unwilling to believe that he can pass by injuries, because we find it so hard to do it. When we do forgive, it is grudgingly and superficially; we therefore infer that God cannot forgive freely and fully. We make a hypocritical distinction between for-petual motion? giving and forgetting injuries. God clears away the score when he grants the pardon. He does not only say, 'thy sins and thy iniquities will I forgive,' but I will remember them no more.' We are disposed to urge the smallness of our offences, as a plea for their forgiveness; whereas God to exhibit the boundlessness of his own mercy, has taught us to allege a plea directly contrary-Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is great.' To natural reason this argument of David is most extraordinary. But while he felt that the greatness of his own iniquity left him no resource, but in the mercy of God, he felt that God's mercy was greater even than his own sin. What a large, what a magnificent idea does it give us of the divine power and goodness, that the believer, instead of pleading the smallness of his own offences as a motive for pardon, pleads only the abundance of the divine compassion! We are told that it is the duty of the Christian to seek God.' We assent to the truth of the proposition. Yet it would be less irksome to corrupt nature, in pursuit of this knowledge, to go a pilgrimage to distant lands, than to seek him within our own hearts. Our own heart is the true terra incognitia: a land more foreign and unknown to us, then the regions of the polar circle. Yet that heart is the place, in which an acquaintance with God must be sought. It is there we must worship him, if we would worship him in spirit and in truth. But, alas! the heart is not the home of a worldly man, it is scarcely the home of a Christian. If business and pleasure are the natural element of the generality-a dreary vacuity, sloth and insensibility, too often worse than both, disincline, disqualify too many Christians for the pursuit. I have observed, and I think I have heard others observe, that a common beggar had rather screen himself under the wall of a churchyard, if overtaken by a shower of rain, though the church door stand invitingly open, than take shelter within it, while divine service is performing. It is a less annoyance to him to be drenched with the storm, than to enjoy the convenience of a shelter and a seat, if he must enjoy them at the heavy price cf listening to the sermon. Though we are ready to express a general sense of our confidence in Almighty goodness, yet what definite meaning do we annex to the expression? What practical evidences have we to produce, that we really do trust him? Does this trust deliver us from worldly anxiety? Does it exonerate us from the same perturbation of spirits, which those endure who make no such profession? Does it relieve the mind from doubt and distrust? Does it tranquillize the troubled heart, does it regulate its disorders, and com. pose its fluctuations? Does it sooth us under irritation? Does it support under trials? Does it fortify us against temptations? Does it lead us to repose a full confidence in that Being whom we profess to trust? Does it produce in us, 'that work of righteousness, which is peace,' that effect of righteousness, which is quietness and assurance for ever? Do we commit ourselves and our concerns to God in word, or in reality? Does this implicit reliance simplify our desires? Does it induce us to credit the testimony of his word and the promises of his Gospel? Do we not even entertain some secret suspicions of his faithfulness and truth in our hearts, when we persuade others and try to persuade ourselves that we unreservedly trust him. In the preceding chapter we endeavoured to illustrate our want of love to God, by our not being as forward to vindicate the divine conduct as to justify that of an acquaintance. The same illustration may express our reluctance to trust in God. If a tried friend engage to do us a kindness, though he may not think it necesssary to explain the particular manner in which he intends to do it, we repose on his word. Assured of the result, we are neither very inquisitive about the mode nor the detail. But do we treat our Almighty friend with the same liberal confidence? Are we not murmuring because we cannot see all the process of his administration, and follow his movements step by step? Do we wait the development of his plan, in full assurance that the issue will be ultimately good? Do we trust that he is as abundantly willing as able, to do more for us than we can ask or think. if by our suspicions we do not offend him, if by our infidelity we do not provoke him? In short, do we not think ourselves utterly undone, when we have only but Providence to trust to? While we condemn the beggar, let us look We are perhaps ready enough to acknowledge into our own hearts; happy if we cannot there God in our mercies, nay, we confess him in the detect somewhat of the same indolence, indis-ordinary enjoyments of life. In some of these posedness, and distaste to serious things! Hap. common mercies, as in a bright day, a refreshpy, if we do not find, that we prefer not only ing shower, a delightful scenery, a kind of senour pleasures and enjoyments, but, I had almost sitive pleasure, an hilarity of spirits, a sort of said, our very pains, and vexations, and incon- animal enjoyment, though of a refined nature, veniences, to communing with our Maker! mixes itself with our devotional feelings; and Happy, if we had not rather be absorbed in our though we confess and adore the bountiful petty cares, and little disturbances, provided we Giver, we do it with a little mixture of self-com. can contrive to make them the means of occupy-placency, and of human gratification, which he ing our thoughts, filling up our minds, and pardons and accepts. drawing them away from that devout "inter. But we must look for him in scenes less ani mating, we must acknowledge him on occa. sions less exhilarating, less sensibly gratifying. It is not only in his promises that God manifests his mercy. His threatenings are proofs of the samo compassionate love. He threatens, not to punish, but by the warning, to snatch from the punishment. We may also trace marks of his hand, not only in the awful visitations of life, not only in the severer dispensations of his providence, but in vexations so trivial that we should hesitate to suspect that they are providential appointments, did we not know that our daily life is made up of unimportant circumstances rather than of great events. As they are, however, of sufficient importance to exercise the Christian tempers and affections, we may trace the hand of ur heavenly Father in those daily little disapointments and hourly vexations, which occur even in the most prosperous state, and which are inseparable from the condition of humanity. -We must trace that same beneficent hand, secretly at work for our purification, our correction, our weaning from life; in the imperfections and disagreeableness of those who may be about us; in the perverseness of those with whom we transact business, and in those interruptions which break in upon our favourite engagements. We are perhaps too much addicted to our innocent delights, or we are too fond of our leisure, of our learned, even of our religious leisure. But while we say it is good for us to be here, the divine vision is withdrawn, and we are compelled to come down from the mount. Or, perhaps, we do not improve our retirement to the purposes for which it was granted, and to which we had resolved to devote it, and our time is broken in upon to make us more sensible of its value. Or we feel a complacency in our leisure, a pride in our books; perhaps we feel proud of the good things we are intending to say, or me. ditating to write, or preparing to do. A check is necessary, yet it is given in a way almost imperceptible. The hand that gives it is unseen, is unsuspected, yet it is the same gracious hand which directs the more important events of life. An importunate application, a disqualifying, though not severe indisposition, a family avocation, a letter important to the writer, but unseasonable to us, breaks in on our projected privacy; calls us to a sacrifice of our inclination, to a renunciation of our own will. These incessant trials of temper, if well improved, may be more salutary to the mind, than the finest passage we had intended to read, or the sublimest sentiment we had fancied we should write. God; we may please him without any other exertion than by crossing our own will. Perhaps you had been busying your imagina. tion with some projected scheme, not only law. ful, but laudable. The design was radically good, but the supposed value of your own agency, might too much interfere, might a little taint the purity of your best intentions. The motives were so mixed that it was difficult to separate them. Sudden sickness obstructed the design. You naturally lament the failure, not perceiving that, however good the work might be for others, the sickness was better for your self. An act of charity was in your intention, but God saw that your soul required the exercise of a more difficult virtue; that humility and resignation, that the patience, acquiescence, and contrition of a sick bed, were more necessary for you. He accepts the meditated work as far as it was designed for his glory, but he calls his servant to other duties, which were more salutary for him, and of which the master was the better judge. He sets aside his work, and orders him to wait, the more difficult part of his task. As far as your motive was pure, you will receive the reward of your unperformed charity, though not the gratification of the per"formance. If it was not pure, you are rescued from the danger attending a right action performed on a worldly principle. You may be the better Christian though one good deed is subtracted from your catalogue. By a life of activity and usefulness, you had perhaps attracted the public esteem.-An ani mal activity had partly stimulated your exer tions. The love of reputation begins to mix itself with your better motives. You do not, it is presumed, act entirely or chiefly for humar. applause; but you are too sensible to it. It is a delicious poison which begins to infuse itself into your purest cup. You acknowledge indeed the sublimity of higher motives, but do you never feel that, separated from this accompani ment of self, they would be too abstracted, too speculative, and might become too little produr. tive both of activity and of sensible gratifica. tion? You begin to feel the human incentivo necessary, and your spirits would flag if it were withdrawn. This sensibility to praise would gradually tarnish the purity of your best actions. Ile who sees your heart, as well as your works, mercifully snatches you from the perils of pros. perity. Malice is awakened. Your most meri. torious actions are ascribed to the most corrupt motives. You are attacked just where your character is least vulnerable. The enemies Instead then of going in search of great mor- whom your success raised up, are raised up by tifications, as a certain class of pious writers God, less to punish than to save you. We aro recommend, let us cheerfully bear and diligently far from meaning that he can ever be the author improve these inferior trials which God pre. of evil; he does not excite or approve the capares for us. Submission to a cross which he lumny, but he uses your calumniators as instru inflicts, to a disappointment which he sends, to a ments of your purification. Your fame was too contradiction of our self-love, which he appoints, dear to you. It is a costly sacrifice, but God is a far better exercise than great penances of requires it. It must be offered up. You would our own choosing. Perpetual conquests over im- gladly compound for any, for every other offer. patience, ill-temper, and self-will, indicate a bet-ing, but this is the offering he chooses: and ter spirit than any self-imposed mortification. while he graciously continues to employ you We may traverse oceans, and scale mountains for his glory, he thus teaches you to renounce en uncommanded pilgrimages, without pleasing your own. He sends this trial as a test, b which you are to try yourself. He thus instructs, ed had, before their conversion no vices to which you not to abandon your Christian exertions, but to elevate the principle which inspired them, to defecate it from all impure admixtures. By thus stripping the most engaging employments of this dangerous delight, by infusing some drops of salutary bitterness into our sweetest draught, by some of these ill-tasted but wholesome mercies, he graciously compels us to return to himself. By taking away the stays by which we are perpetually propping up our frail delights, the fall to the ground. We are as it were driven back to Him, who condescends to receive us, after we have tried every thing else, and after every thing else has failed us, and though he knows we should not have returned to Him if every thing else had not failed us. He makes us feel our weakness, that we may have recourse to his strength; he makes us sensible of our hitherto unperceived sins, that we may take refuge in his everlasting compassion CHAP. IX. Christianity Universal in its Requisitions. It is not unusual to see people get rid of some of the most awful injunctions, and emancipate themselves from some of the most solemn requisitions of Scripture, by affecting to believe that they do not apply to them. They consider them as belonging exclusively to the first age of the Gospel, and to the individuals to whom they were immediately addressed; consequently the necessity to observe them does not extend to persons under an established Christianity, to hereditary Christians. These exceptions are particularly applied to some of the leading doctrines, so forcibly and repeatedly pressed in the Epistles. The reasoners endeavour to persuade themselves that it was only the Ephesians,' who are dead in trespasses and sins that it was only the Galatians who are enjoined not to fulfil the lusts of the flesh'that it was only the Philippians who were enemies to the cross of Christ." They shelter themselves under the comfortable assurances of a geographical security. As they know that they are neither Ephesians, Galatians, nor Philippians, they have of course little or nothing to do with the reproofs, expostulations, or threatenings which were originally directed to the converts among those people. They console themselves with the belief that it was only these pagans who walked according to the course of this world' who were 'strangers from the covenants of promise' and who were without God in the world.' · · But these self-satisfied critics would do well to learn that not only circumcision or uncircumcision,'-but baptism or no baptism avail. eth nothing,' (I mean as a mere form) but a new creature.' An irreligious professor of Christianity is as much a stranger and foreigner, as a heathen; he is no more a fellow citizen of the saints,' and of the household of God than a Colosian or Galatian was, before the Christian dispensation had reached them. But the persons to whom the Apostles preach we are not liable, they had certainly difficulties afterwards from which we are happily exempt There were indeed differences between them and us in external situation, in local circumstances, references which we ought certainly to take into the account in perusing the epistlce We allow that they were immediately, but we do not allow that they were exclusively, applicable to them. It would have been too limited an object for inspiration to have confined its instructions to any one period, when its purpose was the conversion and instruction of the whole unborn world. That these converts were miraculously called out of darkness into the mavellous light of the gospel-that they were changed from gross blindness to a rapid illuminationthat the embracing the new faith exposed them to persecution, reproach and ignominy-that the few had to struggle against the world-that laws, principalities and powers which support our faith opposed theirs-these are distinctions of which we ought not to lose sight: nor should we forget that not only all the disadvantages lay on their side in this antecedent condition, but that also all the superiority lies on ours in that which is subsequent. But however the condition of the external state of the Church might differ, there can be no necessity for any difference in the interior state of the individual Christian. On whatever high principles of devotedness to God and love to man they were called to act, we are called to act on precisely the same. If their faith was called to more painful exertions, if their self-denial to harder sacrifices, if their renunciation of earthly things to severer trials, let us thankfully remem. ber this would naturally be the case at the first introduction of a religion which had to combat with the pride, prejudices and enmity of corrupt nature, invested with temporal power :-That the hostile party would not fail to perceive how much the new religion opposed itself to their corruptions, and that it was introducing a spirit which was in direct and avowed hostility to the spirit of the world. But while we are deeply thankful for the di minished difficulties of an established faith, let us never forget that Christianity allows of no di. minution in the temper, of no abatement in the spirit, which constituted a Christian in the first ages of the church. Christianity is precisely the same religion now as it was when our Saviour was upon earth The spirit of the world is exactly the same now as it was then. And if the most eminent of the apostles, under the immediate guidance of in. spiration were driven to lament their conflicts with their own corrupt nature, the power of temptation, combining with their natural pro pensities to evil, how can we expect that a lower faith, a slackened zeal, an abated diligence, and an inferior holiness will be accepted in us? Bolievers then were not called to higher degress of purity, to a more elevated devotion, to a deeper humility, to greater rectitude, patience and sin cerity, than they are called to in the age in which we live. The promises are not limited to the period in which they were made, the aid of the Spirit is not confined to those on whom it |