Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

how few comparatively arrive at any higher degree of piety than that of Agrippa, or are any further persuaded than to be almost Christians! Prove your own selves, brethren. Have the word and the ordinances of God produced any amelioration of your morals and practice; are you less worldly-minded, less revengeful, less covetous, less sensual than in time past; or like the lean kine of Pharaoh, have you drawn no nourishment from all the means of grace? God forbid; for this atrophy of the soul is a sickness unto death. But unless we be not almost but altogether Christians, we cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. The punishment of Ananias and Sapphira was dreadful and exemplary; but do we not sin after the similitude of their transgression, if we make a partial surrender of ourselves to God, with a reserve for the gratification of our worldly lusts? How long halt we then between two opinions; if the world be our God, let us love and serve the world; but if the Lord be indeed our God, we must love and serve him only, and, as he requires, with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength. To be thus altogether a Christian is indeed an arduous endeavour. But does not excellence in every profession demand persevering and laborious

application? By the slaves of this world mountains of difficulty are levelled, toilsome days and sleepless nights are unrepiningly endured when they press forward to the prize of avarice or ambition. Hence it is evident that the difficulties of the Christian life grow out of the corruptions of the unrenewed man. For they who in an honest and good heart having heard the word, gladly and cordially embrace the terms of salvation by Christ Jesus, have never failed to experience that his yoke is easy and his burden light. In the practice of religion above all things, if there be first a willing mind, the greatest obstacle is surmounted. The resolution once formed of acting up to our convictions, every religious service will tend to strengthen and settle our faith, and promote our growth in grace and every christian virtue. The word of God will become in us a powerful principle of life and action; we shall taste the full comforts of the hope that is in us, and be no longer almost but altogether Christians. May we all aspire after so blessed a state. May we attain to some resemblance of the holy man recorded in the text; like him may we "count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord;" like him may we "preserve a con

science void of offence towards God and towards men;" like him may we "fight the good fight, finish our course, keep the faith, and at the hour of death obtain the crown of righteousness laid up for all those that love the appearing of the Lord Jesus."

SERMON XII.

ROMANS c. xii. v. 11.

Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.

THE natural tendency of our affections to pass. the limits of moderation extends to the concerns of religion, a subject in which as all men are interested, so almost all have run into some extreme of doctrine or of practice. The history of the church, it must be acknowledged, abounds with extravagances which perplex the candid, and are the jest of the profane. By some, religion has been made to consist in violent affections, by others it is divested of all devotional warmth, and confined to what is barely rational, cold, unaffecting, and simple. In fact, religion has been marked with a diversity of character and expression corresponding in some degree to the varieties of the human character in different periods of time and in different denominations of Christians. The hearts of some are tender and their

:

passions fervent: the temper of others is calm, and equal, and wrought with difficulty into ecstacy and rapture. Some are fearful of extravagance, and fortified against the influences of enthusiasm while others look with jealousy on every exercise of reason, content with feeling what they know not how to explain, and are indifferent how they understand. It is therefore our duty to attend to the bias of the age, to guard the character of religion from the reproaches it may suffer by the excesses of its ardent friends, or the lukewarmness of its indifferent professors. The disposition perhaps too generally prevails to reduce religion to a dry system of ethical precepts, like a civil or criminal code, in which the precise amount of obligation and the limits of transgression may be clearly ascertained. Inquisitive and speculative minds are peculiarly inclined to prefer the exercise of the understanding to that of the heart. But, my brethren, when we consider how important a part of our constitution our affections are, we cannot suppose that religion is the only subject from which the exercise of them is to be excluded. When we consider also the sublimity of religious truths, the influence they have on our happiness here, and our expectations hereafter, surely we cannot be

« AnteriorContinuar »