welcome and secret whisper of self-condemnationyou will stand fast in defending the new tenets which you have adopted-you will be active champions in resisting the old opinions which you have determined to reject - you will begin to ridicule diligence as a debasing and burthensome drudgeryyou will venture to turn religion itself into a subject of mockery - instead of seeing any merit in striving against your carnal affections, you will be disposed to make it your boast to be a man of what you miscall spirit in the arts of seduction, or the excesses of intoxication. They who look attentively at real life will acquit me of exaggeration in these statements, and of moroseness in these warnings. Keep therefore your imaginations and your appetites in a state of constant control. Review and correct, not only every confirmed, but every rising prejudice in favour of vice, and look with just suspicion, and even horror, upon the bad opinions and the bad habits of many who are around you. Above all, let a deep sense of Almighty God, of his glorious attributes, of his revealed will, of his future dispensations as the righteous governor in the moral world, be seated in your souls. Is he not present with you in the chamber and the field? Has he not preserved you from innumerable accidents and calamities? Can he not make you miserable or happy for ever? To conclude, was it by acting otherwise than I advise you to act, that the Apostles held fast the truth, or were qualified to count it all joy when they fell into divers trials? Did they make any mean and dastardly concessions to the popular opinions or the corrupt customs of the world? Did they handle the Gospel deceitfully, in order to please the fastidious Athenians? Did they disguise the deformity of sensual indulgences, that they might conciliate the favour of the luxurious and licentious Corinthians? Did they explain away the precepts of their Master, that they might soften the fierceness, or soothe the pride, of the Roman magistrates by whom they were persecuted? No, surely; they were alike inflexible to the solicitations of perfidious friends, and undismayed by the menaces of their most cruel enemies; they put on the helmet of salvation; they bore in their hands the sword of faith; they were strong in the whole armour of God. But, through the gracious providence of the Deity, you are not required to engage in contests thus extensive and thus perilous. Be it so. But will you sink under the less difficulty, because you are not called upon to contend with the greater? When the ordinary temptations of life befall you, are you authorized to be negligent, or to be weak, for no other reason than that you never will have any opportunity for displaying your fidelity and your might in combating the extraordinary? Doubtless in some countries, where the Gospel is the established religion, your memory will supply you with hateful and frightful occurrences, which show that in our own days the tyranny of Christian inquisitors is not less formidable than was of old the inhumanity of heathen persecutors. Granted, too, it must be, that in the countries to which I advert, it is most difficult for human patience or human courage to stand fast in the cause of truth. But in this land of freedom civil and religious, hunger, thirst, and cold, the dungeon, the scourge, the axe, and the cross, are not parts of our moral discipline in the profession of our faith. Be it so. But are we therefore quite secure? Have we no need to be upon the watch against other dangers? In reality, my brethren, the task imposed upon every one of you, and myself, is sufficient to exercise the utmost fortitude which any of us possess; and be our situation ever so obscure, and our sphere of action ever so confined, there is abundant reason for us all to implore the assistance of the Deity, that in seasons of trial we may stand fast. Let us then be strict and firm in our attachment to virtue, because we know that the Supreme Being beholds our actions, and will not suffer our labour to be expended in vain. In order then to quit yourselves with seriousness and constancy, turn your thoughts towards that future state to which you may be summoned within one year or one day. Here a splendid and unbounded prospect lies before you; for, compared with the glory which shall be revealed hereafter, what, I beseech you, are the most enchanting pleasures, or what the most terrifying distresses, of this present state? If a solemn judgment at the bar of the Almighty, and the rewards and punishments which must instantaneously follow it, be distinctly fixed in our view, it is scarcely possible but that the most wavering sinner will at last be constant, and the most timorous become courageous. Yes, my brethren, an habitual converse with God will by degrees produce in you that elevation of soul which looks down without any emotion of flattering hope, or abject fear, upon all that this fleeting scene can bestow, and all that it can take away. It will enable you to feel a seasonable and instantaneous alarm when your own irregular passions, or the treacherous suggestions of your companions, would lead you to violate the commands of God. It will excite in you a spirit of vigilance, and a spirit of heroism, through all the stages of your Christian course, and in all the struggles of your Christian warfare. It will give purity and sincerity to your directions, vigour and firmness to your hope, enlargement and ardour to your charity. No earthly pleasure will decoy you from acting like men. earthly dangers will deter you from being steady in your faith as to the genuine and hallowed doctrines of the Gospel, or being steadfast and immoveable in your practical obedience to the Lord. SERMON XXXVI.* ON PRIVATE PRAYER. MATTHEW xiv. 23. He went up into a mountain apart to pray. THE judgments of men have in all ages been distracted, and their morals, I fear, injured by impertinent and invidious comparisons. Objects which are only distinct from each other have been represented as contrary and incompatible, and their value, which changes with the circumstances of particular men, has been absurdly calculated from general rules and theoretic principles. Hence the idle debates that have been agitated, sometimes by the visionary philosopher, and sometimes by the melancholy recluse, on the comparative excellence of speculative and practical life, and of the social or solitary. Yet common sense will surely tell us, that speculation, unless coupled with practice, may confer intellectual superiority, but cannot imply any moral merit; and we may learn from the same director, that if the temptations to vice be in a social state many, the opportunities for virtue in a solitary one are few. * 1786. |