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REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XIV. - MEASURES TO PROMOTE REVIVALS. paragraph 72 God has established no particular system of measures to be employed - Our present forms of public worship have been arrived at by a succession of new measures.

God has a right to dispose of our time as He pleases, to require us to give up any portion of our time, or all our time, to duties of instruction and devotion. And when circumstances plainly call for it, it is our duty to lay aside every other business, and make direct and continuous efforts for the salvation of souls. If we transact our business upon right principles, and from right motives, and wholly for the glory of God, we shall never object to go aside to attend a protracted meeting, whenever there appears to be a call for it in the providence of God.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XX. - INSTRUCTIONS TO CONVERTS (continued). paragraph 27 Other points on which young converts ought to be instructed - How young converts should be treated by the Church - Some of the evils resulting from defective instruction in the first stages of Christian experience.

He is justly subject to the whole penalty. If he disobeys God habitually in one particular, he does not, in fact, obey Him in any particular. Obedience to God consists in the state of the heart. It is being willing to obey God; willing that God should rule in all things. But if a man habitually disobeys God, in any one particular, he is in a state of mind that renders obedience in anything else impossible. To say that in some things a man obeys God, out of respect to His authority, and that in some other things he refuses obedience, is absurd. The fact is, that obedience to God consists in an obedient state of heart, a preference of God's authority and commandments to everything else. If, therefore, an individual appears to obey in some things, and yet perseveringly and knowingly disobeys in any one thing, he is deceived. He offends in one point, and this proves that he is guilty of all; in other words, that he does not, from the heart, obey at all. A man may pray half of his time and have no religion; if he does not keep the commandments of God, his very prayer will be hateful to God. "He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination" (Proverbs 28:9). Do you hear that? If a man refuses to obey God's law, if he refuses to comply with any one duty, he cannot pray, he has no religion, his very devotions are hateful.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XXI. - THE BACKSLIDER IN HEART. paragraph 15 What backsliding in heart is not - What it is - What are its evidences - What are its consequences - How to recover from such a state.

3. It consists in the Christian withdrawing himself from that state of entire and universal devotion to God, which constitutes true religion, and coming again under the control of a self-pleasing spirit.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XXI. - THE BACKSLIDER IN HEART. paragraph 27 What backsliding in heart is not - What it is - What are its evidences - What are its consequences - How to recover from such a state.

8. A want of interest in secret prayer is also an evidence of a backslidden heart. Young Christian, if you find yourself losing your interest in the Bible and in secret prayer, stop short, return to God, and give yourself no rest, till you enjoy the light of His countenance. If you feel disinclined to pray, or to read your Bible; if when you pray and read your Bible, you have no heart; if you are inclined to make your secret devotions short, or are easily induced to neglect them; or if your thoughts, affections, and emotions wander, you may know that you are a backslider in heart, and your first business is to be broken down before God, and to see that your love and zeal are renewed.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XXI. - THE BACKSLIDER IN HEART. paragraph 45 What backsliding in heart is not - What it is - What are its evidences - What are its consequences - How to recover from such a state.

While the heart is engaged in religion, Christians will not readily omit family devotions, and whenever they are ready to find an excuse for the omission, it is a sure evidence that they are backslidden in heart.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XXII. - GROWTH IN GRACE. paragraph 35 What grace is - What the injunction to "grow in grace" does not mean - What it does mean - Conditions of growth in grace - What is not proof of growth - What is proof - How to grow in grace.

These appetites, passions, and propensities, although not sinful in themselves, have been regarded and spoken of as indwelling sin. Strictly, they cannot be sin, because they are involuntary. But they are often a great hindrance to our growth in the favor of God. "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would" (Galatians 5:17). This means that we cannot do for God what we otherwise would, because we have to battle so much with the states of the sensibility, to keep them under. As the sensibility becomes more and more subdued and in harmony with the will's devotion to God, we are left free to render to God a more unembarrassed service. Therefore, the more thorough the sanctification of the sensibility, the more thoroughly we are in favor with God.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XXII. - GROWTH IN GRACE. paragraph 36 What grace is - What the injunction to "grow in grace" does not mean - What it does mean - Conditions of growth in grace - What is not proof of growth - What is proof - How to grow in grace.

10. A growing thoroughness and universality of consecration, of spirit, soul, and body, is the condition of more and more growth in the favor of God. It is common, at first, for the steadfastness of the will's devotion to God to be overcome by the clamor of the excited appetites, passions, and propensities, or by the various states of the sensibility. Whenever the will yields to these excited states, you sin. But, in such cases, the sin is not willful, in the sense of being deliberate and intentional; it is rather a slip, an inadvertency, a momentary yielding under the pressure of highly excited feeling. Nevertheless, this yielding is sin. However excited the states of the sensibility may be, if the will does not yield, there is strictly no sin. Still, while the will is steadfast, maintaining its consecration and obedience to God, the appetites originating in the body, and the various propensities of the soul, which inhere in the sensibility, may be so ajar, in such confusion, and in such a state of morbid development, that the soul may be unfitted for the employments and enjoyments of heaven.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XXII. - GROWTH IN GRACE. paragraph 54 What grace is - What the injunction to "grow in grace" does not mean - What it does mean - Conditions of growth in grace - What is not proof of growth - What is proof - How to grow in grace.

2. Another evidence of growth in grace, is an increasing weanedness from the world. The will may be in an attitude of devotion to God, while the world's seductive charms very much embarrass the healthy action of the Christian life. As the soul becomes crucified and dead to the world, it grows in the favor of God.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XXII. - GROWTH IN GRACE. paragraph 55 What grace is - What the injunction to "grow in grace" does not mean - What it does mean - Conditions of growth in grace - What is not proof of growth - What is proof - How to grow in grace.

3. Less reluctance of feeling, when called to the exercise of self-denial, is an evidence of growth in grace. It shows that the feelings are becoming less and less despotic, that the will is getting more the mastery of them, that the sensibility is getting more into harmony with the devotion of the will and the dictates of the intelligence.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XXII. - GROWTH IN GRACE. paragraph 56 What grace is - What the injunction to "grow in grace" does not mean - What it does mean - Conditions of growth in grace - What is not proof of growth - What is proof - How to grow in grace.

4. Less temptation to sins of omission, is another evidence of growth in grace, e.g., less temptation to shun the cross, to neglect unpleasant duties; less temptation to indolence, to the shirking of responsibility, to neglect of prayer, to reading the Scriptures, and. to private and family devotions; in short, less and less temptation to shun the performance of any duty is evidence of growth in grace. These temptations consist in the excited states of the sensibility. As these become less in strength and frequency, we learn that our sensibility is becoming more completely subjugated to the law of the intelligence and the decisions of the will, and consequently, that the work of the sanctification of the spirit, soul, and body is progressing, and that therefore we are growing in the favor of God.

 

 


REVIVAL LECTURES - LECTURE XXII. - GROWTH IN GRACE. paragraph 98 What grace is - What the injunction to "grow in grace" does not mean - What it does mean - Conditions of growth in grace - What is not proof of growth - What is proof - How to grow in grace.

They instruct the intellect to a certain extent, but they do not meet the wants of the heart. Converts starve under their preaching. They preach an intellectual, rather than a spiritual Gospel They preach religion as a theory, a doctrine, a philosophy and not as a real living experience. It is often exceedingly painful to hear ministers preach who manifestly do not know what they say, or whereof they affirm They speak of religion as an inward sentiment, instead of heart devotion to God; as an emotion, a feeling instead of an all-embracing and efficient love, a voluntary state and attitude of the mind, from which necessarily proceeds a holy life. They speak of faith as; mere intellectual state or conviction, and not as an act of trust, and of committal of the whole being, to do and suffer all the will of God. They speak of repentance as if were a mere involuntary sorrow for sin They do not teach that repentance is a change of mind toward God, a renunciation of the self-seeking spirit, and a turning of the whole mind to God. They speak of holiness as if it were a state utterly unattainable in this life. Indeed, I say it with sorrow, but I must say it, the teaching of a great many ministers is but a stumbling block to the Church. Under their instruction, converts do not, and cannot get so established in grace as to be greatly useful, or to live lives that are honorable to Christ. Just think that in the Nineteenth Century ministers preach to converts that they must grow in grace by works. Be heaven and earth amazed at this! Such teachers do not know how to grow in grace themselves. Shall I be accounted harsh if I say: "They be blind leaders of the blind"?

 

 


IMPORTANT SUBJECTS - SERMON I. SINNERS BOUND TO CHANGE THEIR OWN HEARTS paragraph 28 Ezek. 18-31.--"Make you a new heart, and a new spirit, for why will ye die?"

Suppose a human sovereign should establish a government, and propose as the great end of pursuit, to produce the greatest amount of happiness possible within his kingdom. He enacts wise and benevolent laws, calculated to promote this object to which he conforms all his own conduct; in the administration of which, he employs all his wisdom and energies, and requires all his subjects to sympathize with him; to aim at the same object; to be governed by the same end; the promotion of the highest interests of the community. Suppose these laws to be so framed, that universal obedience would necessarily result in universal happiness. Now suppose that one individual, after a session of obedience and devotion to the interest of the government and the glory of his sovereign, should be induced to withdraw his influence and energies from promoting the public good, and set up for himself; suppose him to say, I will no longer be governed by the principles of good will to the community, and find my own happiness in promoting the public interest; but will aim at promoting my own happiness and glory, in my own way, and let the sovereign and the subjects take care for themselves. "Charity begins at home." Now suppose him thus to set up for himself; to propose his own happiness and aggrandizement as the supreme object of his pursuit, and should not hesitate to trample upon the laws and encroach upon the rights, both of his sovereign and the subjects, wherever those laws or rights lay in the way of the accomplishment of his designs. It is easy to see, that he has become a rebel; has changed his heart, and consequently his conduct; has set up an interest not only separate from but opposed to the interest of his rightful sovereign. He has changed his heart from good to bad; from being an obedient subject he has become a rebel; from obeying his sovereign, he has set up an independent sovereignty; from trying to influence all men to obey the government, from seeking supremely the prosperity and the glory of his sovereign, he becomes himself a little sovereign; and as Absalom caught the men of Israel and kissed them, and thus stole away their hearts; so he now endeavors to engross the affections, to enlist the sympathies, to command the respect and obedience of all around him. Now what would constitute a change of heart in this man towards his sovereign? I answer, for him to go back, to change his mind in regard to the supreme object of pursuit; -- to prefer the glory of his sovereign and the good of the public to his own separate interest, would constitute a change of heart.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 9 TABLE OF CONTENTS ...

Lecture III. Devotion>Devotion

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 144 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

Devotion>Back to Top

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 145 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

Devotion
Lecture III
January 30, 1839

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 151 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

These texts teach the nature and duty of Devotion to God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 152 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

In discussing this subject, I design to show,

I. What is not true devotion to God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 153 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

II. What is true devotion.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 154 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

III. That devotion, and nothing short of devotion is true religion.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 156 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...


I. I am to show what is not true devotion.

1. Devotion does not consist in reading the Bible, nor in praying, nor in attending meetings. These may be, or may not be instances of particular acts of devotion, but are not to be regarded as devotion itself.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 157 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

2. Devotion does not consist in closet, public, or social consecration of ourselves to God. These are to be regarded as special acts of devotion, and pledges or promises on our part of devotion, rather than as constituting devotion.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 158 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

3. Devotion does not consist in individual acts or exercises of any kind. Acts or exercises may be devotional acts, i.e. acts of devotion, but let it be remembered that no acts or exercises constitute devotion.

II. I am to show what is true devotion.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 159 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

It is a state of the mind or of the heart. It is that state of the will in which every thing--our whole life, and being, and possessions, are a continual offering to God; i.e. are continually devoted to God. True devotion, so far from consisting in any individual act, or feelings, must, of necessity, be the supreme devotion of the will, extending to all we have and are--to all times, places, employments, thoughts, and feelings.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 160 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

Let your own ideas of what a minister ought to be illustrate my meaning. You feel that a minister, in preaching the gospel, should have but one design, and that should be to glorify God, in the sanctification and salvation of sinners. You know that he is professedly a servant of God. You feel that he ought to study, and preach, and perform all his ministerial duties--not for himself--not for his salary--not to increase his popularity--but to glorify God. Now you can easily see if a minister has not this singleness of eye, his service cannot be acceptable to God. It is not an offering to God, it is not a devotion to God, but a devotion to himself.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 161 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

Devotion, then, in a minister, is that state of mind in which all his ministerial duties are performed with a single eye to the glory of God, and where his whole life is a continual offering to God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 164 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

Now remember that nothing short of this is devotion in you. Bear it in mind that no particular acts, or fervor, or gushings of emotion, or resolutions, or purposes of amendment, or of future obedience, are devotion.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 165 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

But devotion is that state of the will in which the mind is swallowed up in God, as the object of supreme affection, in which we not only live and move in God, but for God. In other words, devotion is that state of mind in which the attention is diverted from self, and self-seeking, and is directed to God; the thoughts, and purposes, and desires, and affections, and emotions, all hanging upon, and devoted to Him.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 166 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

III. I am to show that devotion, and nothing short of devotion, is true religion.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 167 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

Devotion and true religion are identical.

1. Because devotion implies and includes supreme love to God. It is impossible that we should be devoted to an object, unless it be the object of our supreme affection.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 169 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

3. Nothing short of this state of mind which I have described is consistent with true religion. Supreme love to an object is a state, and not a mere act of the mind. By state, I mean a voluntary state of mind. Where, therefore, there is a supreme love, devotion, or consecration to God, must be a state--a voluntary state of mind--in opposition to individual acts of mind.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 170 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

4. Nothing short of this can be acceptable to God. Unless devotion be a habit, or state of mind, unless the whole being be an offering to God, he must have a rival in our hearts. This He will not endure; and to attempt to please Him by isolated acts of devotion, when it is not the habit, and state of our minds, is infinitely more abominable than for a wife to attempt to please her husband with an occasional smile, when she lives only to please and gain the affections of another man.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 172 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

2. Some, who seem to do all for God, and are manifestly in a devotional state of mind, do not, after all, seem to realize that every act devoted to God is as acceptable as prayer or praise. If, by necessary duties, they are kept from spending much time in their closets, and going a great deal to meeting, Satan takes advantage of their ignorance, and brings them into bondage, he endeavors to persuade them that they are neglecting their duties to God, and attending to other things. Now you who are devoted to God should understand that if the providence of God confine you at home to nurse the sick, or prevent you from observing those hours of secret prayer which you are wont to observe, you are not to be brought into bondage on this account, if you are conscious that these other duties are performed for God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 173 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

3. Others think that devotion may be sincere, and yet extend only to certain duties, i.e. that a man may pray sincerely, and from right motives, and yet be worldly in the transaction of business. Now a little reflection will convince any honest mind that it is naturally impossible. Devotion to God cannot be sincere any further than it annihilates selfishness. Devotion and selfishness are eternal opposites.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 174 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

4. It is a very common idea that we are to be more devotional, i.e. more religious, on the Sabbath, and in secret and social prayer, than at other times and in other things. But the text shows that whatever we do--whether we eat or drink--at all times--in all places--and in all things--we are to do all for the glory of God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 175 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

5. Many mistake the religion of emotion for that of the will or heart. This is manifest from their lives. You will often witness the gushings forth of their emotions. They weep, and appear to melt and break down. They promise reformation, and entire consecration to God; but attempt to trade with them the very next day, and you will find them supremely selfish--that they are not devoted to God, but to their own interest, and are ready to take any advantage, even of their brethren, to benefit themselves.

Now in this case it is manifest that their melting and breaking down was merely a gushing of the emotions, and not a will subdued and devoted to God. Devotion belongs to the will, and there may be many paroxysms of emotion, where the consecration of the will to self remains supreme.

6. Many mistake the consecration and devotion of the imagination for that of the heart. They can write poems, or sermons, or religious articles for the paper--they can talk, and pray, and preach, and exercise any degree of zeal in the cause of religion, and yet meet them on any ground where the deep foundations of their hearts are developed, and you find they will be supremely selfish.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 176 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

7. Many expect devotion without faith. This is naturally impossible. The mind cannot be devoted to God without confiding in Him.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 178 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

9. Many do not distinguish between that naked faith in the simple truth, which invariably begets devotion, and their ever varying states of emotion, which they are prone to call religion. Simple faith in the character of God, as revealed in the Bible, naturally and necessarily begets a spirit of consecration to God. But there may be any amount of emotion, without any true devotion.

REMARKS.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 179 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

1. A spirit of devotion will make the most constant cares and the most pressing labors the means of the deepest and most constant communion with God. The more constant and pressing our duties are, if they are performed for God, the deeper and more incessant is our communion with him; for whatever is done in a spirit of devotion is communion with God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 180 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

2. They are not Christians who do not hold communion with God in their ordinary employments. If you do not hold conscious communion with God in your ordinary business, it is because it is not performed with a spirit of devotion. If not performed in a spirit of devotion, it is sin. But if your ordinary employments are sin, then certainly you have no religion, unless a man can be truly religious, and yet ordinarily a servant of the Devil.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 182 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

4. That is unlawful which cannot be done in a spirit of devotion. If you feel the incongruity of performing it ,as an act of devotion to God, it is unlawful, yourself being judge.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 183 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

5. That is unlawful which is not so done; i.e. whatever the act may be in itself, if it is not actually performed as an act of devotion to God, it is sin. Hence "the plowing of the wicked is sin." Eating and drinking, and the most common acts of life, if not done in a spirit of devotion, are sin.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 184 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

6. Any thing not right or wrong in itself, may be either right or wrong, as it is or is not done in a spirit of devotion. Hence:

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 188 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

9. There is no peace of mind but in a state of devotion. No other state of mind is reasonable. In no other state will the powers of the mind harmonize. In any other state than that of devotion to God, there is an inward struggle, and mutiny, and strife in the mind itself. The conscience upbraids the heart for selfishness. Hence "there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 189 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

10. They have "perfect peace whose minds are thus stayed upon God" in an attitude of constant devotion. It is impossible that they should not have peace; for devotion implies and includes peace.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 190 144 Lecture III. Devotion ...

And now, beloved, have you the spirit of true devotion? Do not reply, I hope so; for nothing but consciousness should satisfy you for a moment. If you are devoted to God, you are conscious of it; and if you are not conscious of being devoted to God, it is because you are not so devoted. "Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap; for he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, and he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 328 292 Lecture V. The Law of God 1 ...

22. That it is inconsistent with our living in human society--with mingling in the scenes, and engaging in the affairs of this world. Hence the absurd and ridiculous notions of papists, in retiring to monasteries, and convents--in taking the veil--and, as they say, retiring to a life of devotion.

Now I suppose this state of voluntary exclusion from human society, to be utterly inconsistent with any degree of holiness, and a manifest violation of the law of love to our neighbor.

23. That a state of entire holiness would be recognized as such by all men.

Now this is as far as possible from being true. It was insisted, and positively believed, by the Jews, that Jesus Christ was possessed of a wicked, instead of a holy spirit. Such were their notions of holiness, that they no doubt supposed him to be actuated by any other than the Spirit of God. They especially supposed so on account of his opposition to the current orthodoxy, and the ungodliness of the religious teachers of the day. Now, who does not see, that when the Church is in a great measure conformed to the world that a spirit of holiness in any man, would certainly lead him to aim the sharpest rebukes, at the spirit and life of those in this state, whether in high or low places. And who does not see that this would naturally result in his being accused of possessing a wicked spirit?

24. That a state of entire holiness implies a state of entire moroseness of temper and manners.

Nothing is farther from the truth than this. It is said of Xavier, whom perhaps few holier men have ever lived, that "he was so cheerful as often to be accused of being gay." Cheerfulness is certainly the result of holy affections. And sanctification no more implies moroseness in this world than it does in heaven.

25. That entire holiness is inconsistent with any further dependence on Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

Now this idea arises out of the very obscure notions, that people have with regard to what constitutes entire sanctification. They seem to suppose, that in sanctification, the Holy Spirit changes the nature, so that men remain holy without any further influence from the Spirit of Christ. Whereas, a state of entire and permanent sanctification is nothing else, than a state of entire and perpetual dependence on Christ, and on the Holy Spirit. It is the state in which the mind throws itself entirely upon the supporting grace of Christ.

REMARKS.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 1164 1132 Lecture XX. How to Prevent Our Employments from Injuring Our Souls ...

It has come to be a subject of almost universal complaint, that our employments lead us away from God. Men complain of their cares, and having so much business on their hands as to secularize their spirit--blunt the edge of devotional feeling--and more or less insensibly, but certainly to draw off their hearts from God. And those who are engaged in intellectual and even spiritual occupations, such as teachers of science and teachers of religion, are by their employments apt to fall into an intellectual and hardened frame of mind, and to wander far from God. It seems to be understood that there is a kind of necessity in the case, and that we are naturally unable to attend to the various duties and callings incidental to our relations in this world without secularizing our spirit, and annihilating a devotional state of mind. Now to suppose there is any necessity for this result is to charge God foolishly. He has never placed us here surrounded with these necessities to be a snare and a curse to us. On the contrary, all the employments that are strictly lawful, instead of being a snare, are indispensable to the highest development of our powers, and to the growth and consummation of our piety. The whole difficulty lies in the abuse of a thing eminently wise and good. That the facts are according to the general complaint cannot be doubted. Men really are ensnared by their employments. But why? Many seem to suppose that the only way to maintain a spiritual frame of mind is by a total abstraction from those employments, in which it seems to be necessary for men to engage in this world. It was this conceit that led to the establishment of nunneries and monasteries, and to all those fanatical and odious seclusions from society that have abounded among the Papists. The truth is that the right discharge of our duties to God and man, as things are, is indispensable to holiness. And voluntary seclusion from human society and abstracting ourselves from those employments by which man may be benefited, are wholly inconsistent with the principles and spirit of the Christian religion. So did not Christ nor the Apostles. They were eminently active, zealous and useful, in promoting the glory of God and the good of man, in every way in their power. It is a desideratum, therefore, in religion, to understand the secret of making our employments, whatever they are, the means of increasing instead of destroying our spirituality. A great deal needs to be said upon this subject. I can now only say the following things, and may at a future time, if God permit, resume the subject.

1. If you would not that your employment should be a snare to your soul, see to it, that it is not unlawful, i.e. see to it, that it is not an injurious employment--that you are not engaged in that, the natural tendency of which is to injure yourself or your fellowmen.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 1170 1132 Lecture XX. How to Prevent Our Employments from Injuring Our Souls ...

7. Be sure to do every thing in a spirit of entire consecration to God. Maintain perpetually, in every thing, a spirit of as entire consecration, as you know and feel that you ought to maintain in the exercises of the Sabbath day. It is impossible that men should ever pursue their employment without ensnaring their souls, until they understand that the business of every day is to be as sacredly devoted to God, and performed in a spirit of as entire consecration to his service as the holy exercises of the Sabbath. This must not only be understood in theory, but must be reduced to practice. The Sabbath must be distinguished from other days only in the peculiarity of its employments. You must cease to suppose that the Sabbath is God's day, and that the week days are yours--that you may serve God one day, and yourself six days in the week. The Sabbath has its specific and appropriate duties. And so have other days. But every day, and every hour, and every employment, and thought, are to be wholly consecrated to God. And until you have habituated yourself to go to your farms, to your shops, or to your merchandise, as to a business that belongs wholly to God, and is to be performed in a spirit of as true devotion as are the duties of your closet or of the sanctuary, your whole employment will be an everlasting snare, and the final ruin of your souls.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 1171 1132 Lecture XX. How to Prevent Our Employments from Injuring Our Souls ...

8. In short, do nothing, be nothing, buy nothing, sell nothing, possess nothing, do not marry nor decline marriage, do not study nor refrain from study, but in a spirit of entire devotion to God. Consecrate your sleep, your rest, your exercise, your all to God. Learn to do this--practice this, or your employment, whatever it may be, will be the snare and ruin of your soul.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 1176 1132 Lecture XX. How to Prevent Our Employments from Injuring Our Souls ...

4. No man has a right to undertake so much business, for any compensation whatever, as to interfere with his hours of devotion. In cases where persons labor by the day, or month, or year, allowance should always be made in the prices they receive, for sufficient time and opportunity for devotional exercises. They have no right to exact or receive such wages as to render it necessary for them to give up all their time to labor nor ought their employers to expect them to encroach, under any pretense whatever, upon those hours appointed to secret communion with God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 1179 1132 Lecture XX. How to Prevent Our Employments from Injuring Our Souls ...

Now while I am in favor of a thorough education, I do not and cannot believe, with the facts as they exist before me, that the great difference in the usefulness of ministers depends on their being learned men in the common acceptation of that term. Human science, by itself, never made a useful minister, and wherever human science is pushed beyond its proper limit, and made to encroach upon the hours and spirit of devotion--wherever the spirit of human science, instead of the Spirit of God, comes to be that fountain at which a man drinks, he may become in the language of men, a great man, but he will never be a good minister. Until there is a great change upon this subject--until the great effort of the teachers is to make their pupils pious as well as learned, and they are more anxious, and take more pains to effect the former than the latter, our Seminaries can never send out efficient ministers. To require diligence in study, without requiring fervency of spirit--to concern ourselves more that our students have their lessons than that they walk with God--that they commune with Cicero, Horace, and Demosthenes, rather than with God--for us to satisfy ourselves every day in relation to their intellectual progress, and pay little or no attention to the state of their hearts, is an utter abomination, and teachers who do so, whatever other qualifications they may have, are unfit to have the care of young men.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1839 paragraph 1226 1195 Lecture XXI. & XXII. Grieving the Holy Spirit- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

18. Every neglect of duty grieves the Holy Spirit. In reading President Edwards' account of his wife's experience, I was struck with a remark to this effect, that when she was in the highest exercise of grace, she was deeply impressed with the fact, that so much of religion consisted in the discharge of relative and social duties. Many people seem to overlook this part of religion and content themselves with what they call devotion to God. What they mean by devotion is praying, reading the Bible, attending on the exercises of the Sabbath, giving their money to benevolent objects, and such like things, while in their temper they exhibit any thing but the spirit of Christ. Now Christianity wherever it truly exists, will, from its very nature, develop itself to the view of men mainly in its influence in making them discharge all their social and relative duties; and if it be not apparent here it is certain that it does not really exist. There is such a vast amount of negligence among professors of religion as to render it almost certain were there nothing else forbidding in their history that multitudes of them have no religion at all. Some neglect to pay their debts. Not long since I published a sermon on "being in debt," since which I have seen several efforts in some of the religious periodicals to put down or set aside the principles of that sermon, and to remove the pressure from the conscience of the Church and the world in regard to their negligence in this respect. Some have misconceived and of course misrepresented the doctrines of the sermon. Others, by criticisms upon the text, have endeavored to show that it was not a command to abstain from being in debt. It is not now the time or place to reply to those remarks. But I would here simply say that the doctrine of that sermon, that it is a sin to be in debt, is eternal and unalterable truth, whether that particular text prohibits it or not. To deny this is the same absurdity as to say that you may owe a man and be under no obligation to pay him, and the same contradiction as to say that you may neglect or refuse to discharge your obligation without sin. Now what is sin but the violation of an obligation, and what is an obligation but to owe a man? To what then do all such criticisms amount as these to which I have alluded? Do such editors and newspaper-writers expect to set aside the principles of eternal justice, and to persuade mankind that it is not sinful to be in debt or to suffer their obligations to go uncanceled by mere criticisms upon a text? The doctrine of that sermon is true, and self-evident truth, entirely irrespective of its being taught in that or any other text in the Bible. If there were no Bible, that is a truth which must stand forever; and to deny it is a palpable absurdity.

But again let me say that many neglect to do things when and as they ought to be done. Now it is certainly a part of religion to do everything incumbent upon us at the right time and in the right manner, and any and every negligence in this respect is sin. Have you an appointment to meet a neighbor at a particular hour for the transaction of business; be there at the moment, lest you hinder him and all others associated with you in the affair. Is there an appointment for a Church or any other religious meeting, for worship or the transaction of business; be there at the moment, lest you interrupt or hinder the business or devotion of others. Have you engaged to do any thing for your neighbor or for any man or woman on earth, see that you do it just when and as it ought to be done. And in short, no man can keep a conscience void of offense--no man can fulfill the law of love--no man can abstain from grieving the Holy Spirit but by a most faithful and constant discharge of every duty to God or man.

19. Every form of selfishness grieves the Holy Spirit. I have often taught in my sermons that selfishness and sin are synonymous terms. By selfishness, I have often said that I do not mean the mere desire of your own happiness, for this is natural. It is self love, and not selfishness. But when even this desire becomes supreme, and leads you to sacrifice greater interests, for the sake of promoting your own, this is selfishness; and in whatsoever form it is cherished or exhibited, it is an utter abomination to God. How odious and detestable does selfishness appear to God, when he sees it exercised among his children in their intercourse with each other. If you are a parent, you know how you are grieved and offended, if you see one of your little ones bent upon gratifying himself at the expense of the good or happiness of the rest of your children. Now "if you being evil" are so stung and grieved with such a spirit as this, how much more shall your Heavenly Father be grieved at such an exhibition of selfishness among his children?

But there are so many ways in which the Holy Spirit may be grieved, that I must resume the subject, and also show the consequences of grieving the Holy Spirit in my next.


 

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1840 paragraph 96 21 Lectures I. - IX. Sanctification- No.'s 1 - 9 ...

32. Nor does it imply the formation of such holy habits as shall secure obedience. Some have said that it was absurd to profess a state of entire sanctification, on the ground that it implies not only obedience to the law of God, but such a formation and perfection of holy habits as to render it certain that we shall never again sin. And that a man can no more tell when he is entirely sanctified, than he can tell how many holy acts it will take to form holy habits of such strength that he will never again sin. To this I answer,
 

(1.) The law of God has nothing to do with requiring this formation of holy habits. It is satisfied with present obedience. It only demands at the present moment the full devotion of all our powers to God. It never in any instance complains that we have not formed such holy habits as to render it certain that we shall sin no more.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1840 paragraph 99 21 Lectures I. - IX. Sanctification- No.'s 1 - 9 ...

(4.) Entire sanctification does not consist in the formation of holy habits, nor at all depend upon this. Both entire and permanent sanctification are based alone upon the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And perseverance in holiness is to be ascribed alone to the influence of the indwelling Spirit of Christ, instead of being secured by any habits of holiness which we have or ever shall form.
 

33. Nor does it imply exemption from sorrow or mental suffering.

It was not so with Christ. Nor is it inconsistent with our sorrowing for our own past sins, and sorrowing that we have not now the health and vigor, and knowledge, and love, that we might have had, if we had sinned less; or sorrow for those around us-- sorrow in view of human sinfulness, or suffering. These are all consistent with a state of entire sanctification, and indeed are the natural results of it.

34. Nor is it inconsistent with our living in human society-- with mingling in the scenes, and engaging in the affairs of this world. Some have supposed that to be holy we must withdraw from the world. Hence the absurd and ridiculous notions of papists in retiring to monasteries, and convents-- in taking the veil, and as they say, retiring to a life of devotion. Now I suppose this state of voluntary exclusion from human society, to be utterly inconsistent with any degree of holiness, and a manifest violation of the law of love to our neighbor.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1840 paragraph 113 21 Lectures I. - IX. Sanctification- No.'s 1 - 9 ...

(6.) Another peculiarity of this love is that it must be in every instance supreme. Any thing less than supreme love to God, must be idolatry. If any thing else is loved more, that is our God.

I have been surprised to learn that some understand the term supreme in a comparative sense, and not in a superlative sense. They suppose therefore that the law of God requires more than supreme love. Webster's definition of supreme and supremely is "in the highest degree," "to the utmost extent." I understand the law to require as high a state of devotion to God, of love and actual service as the powers of body and mind are capable of sustaining.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1840 paragraph 345 21 Lectures I. - IX. Sanctification- No.'s 1 - 9 ...

8. Again, it is objected against our professing a state of entire sanctification, on the ground that it not only implies present obedience to the law of God, but such a formation and perfection of holy habits, as to render it certain that we shall never again sin. And that a man can no more tell when he is entirely sanctified, than he can tell how many holy acts it will take to form holy habits of such strength that he will never again sin. To this I answer:
 

(1.) The law of God has nothing to do with requiring this formation of holy habits. It is satisfied with present obedience, and only demands at every present moment, the full devotion of all our powers to God. It never, in any instance, complains that we have not formed such holy habits that we shall sin no more.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1840 paragraph 550 452 Lectures X. & XI. Unbelief- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

16. No one believes, who find it difficult to pray. Can a man who has a realizing sense of the state of the world and of the Church, and of the willingness and ability of God to bless mankind, restrain prayer? Will not his very breath be prayer, devotion, and praise? Will not his very heart within him be liquid as water? Will not his bowels of compassion yearn mightily, over a dying world? And will not his soul stand in a continual attitude of thanksgiving, and praise, and supplication?

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1840 paragraph 834 808 Lecture XVII. & XVIII. Communion with God - No.'s 1 & 2 ...

8. When the scriptures are opened to our understandings, and made to take hold upon our hearts, we are in communion with God. A soul not in communion with God, may be interested in the Bible as a history; but its more spiritual parts are like a sealed or an uninteresting book. The mind's eye will wander over chapter after chapter, wander through its sacred pages, and amidst all the glories it reveals, without being struck, and fixed, and held as by enchantment, in view of its glorious developments. But when in communion with God, every sentence bears the impress of God. It is full of meaning, full of light, and love. It discloses the very secrets of the heart of God, and lays his very being bare to our inspection. The soul pauses at every sentence, and wonders, and admires, and adores. It looks into the deep profound. The spiritual world is open to its view. It seems, as with a telescope, to have bidden eternity into his presence. And the whole spiritual world seems to be so uncovered before him, that he is almost in the state in which Paul was, not able to tell whether he is in the body or out of the body. It is easy for a mind in this state to conceive what Paul meant, when he said, "I knew a man fourteen years ago, whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell; God knoweth; I knew such a one caught up into the third heavens, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." The fact is, his mind was so entirely absorbed with the objects presented to his spiritual eye--his attention was so entirely engrossed with them, as to be unconscious of the presence of any objects of sense. And he could not afterwards tell, whether he was in the body or out of the body. It is related of Xavier, that his communion with God was so intense, that when he retired for secret devotion, he was obliged to leave word with his servant to call him off at a certain hour. Sometimes his servant would go, after he had remained for hours in secret communion with God, and find him upon his knees, the Bible open before him, with his eyes fixed, and lost in deep, secret communion with God, so that his servant would be obliged to shake him, before his attention could be so drawn off from spiritual objects, as to be conscious that he was still a resident of earth. I have myself known instances, in which persons were very much in this state of mind.

Now there are many degrees of this kind of communion with God, when the scriptures are so opened up to the mind, and so understood, and its truths so apprehended, and appear to the soul so glorious and ravishing, as to swallow up in a greater or less degree, the thoughts, attention, and whole being.

9. When we are made deeply sensible of our character, past and present, we are in communion with God. Sometimes Christ has intercourse with the soul, and calls its attention to a great many things, that make it vastly ashamed of itself. The whole soul is filled with shame, confusion and blushing. The Holy Spirit gently but thoroughly opens up to the mind, the past, and the present, and lifts up the vail of oblivion, quickens the memory, and as it were causes our whole character to stand out before our mind's eye, like a hideous and unseemly ghost. The soul in this state seeks to find the very lowest place in the whole universe. it cries out, from its deepest foundations, "O to get infinitely low before God." Sometimes persons in this state of shame, self-abasement, and unutterably self-abhorrence, seem not at all to be aware, that this is communion with God. Being in the habit of considering communion with God to consist altogether in those joys which the saints sometimes experience, they do not realize that these deeply self-abasing thoughts and views, are only the result of a close and searching interview with God. In this state of mind, they sometimes feel as if God has forsaken them, and can see it to be so infinitely reasonable, that He should, as not to be aware that they are now, perhaps, more thoroughly in the light, and really in a state of more deep and thorough communion with God than perhaps they have been at any other time.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1841 paragraph 34 16 Lectures XXV. & XXVI. Submission to God- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

But I am saying, and do mean to say, that upon the supposition, that any one is so circumstanced as to render it necessary for God to inflict the pains of hell upon him, that it is his bounden duty to be supremely acquiescent it. Suppose that a man has committed the unpardonable sin, or a sin of such a nature that it cannot consistently be forgiven, can it be right for that sinner to be unwilling to have justice take its course in this case? Can it be right for him to make himself miserable, because the supreme good of the universe demands his damnation? Of his own folly he may complain. Of his sin he may and ought to repent, and be unutterably ashamed; but with being thus disposed of for the promotion of the highest interests of God's kingdom, he ought to be supremely pleased. Why, he was made to glorify God. It was always his duty, to desire, above all things, that God might be glorified and the universe benefitted, to consecrate his whole being to the promotion of this end. In this he was always bound to find his supreme happiness. And now, because of his own voluntary wickedness, he has placed himself in such a situation, that the glory of God and the best interests of his kingdom demand, that he should be put in hell, rather than in heaven, has he a right to demur to this--to refuse to be used for the glory of God--to refuse to consecrate his whole being to that which will, in the highest degree, promote this infinitely desirable end? I say again, and do insist, that in such circumstances he is solemnly bound, to consecrate his whole being to the glory of God, and the support of his government, in this particular way, and willingly to lie down upon the bed of eternal death, and give up his whole being to suffering the penalty of the law of God.

7. True submission includes a deep and continual longing of soul, that the whole will of God should be done on earth as it is done in heaven. This is the state of mind that God requires, and that Christ directed to be exercised and expressed in prayer to God. This is to be the daily constant language of our souls, "Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven."

II. Some things that are implied in submission.

1. It implies the actual forsaking of all known sin. It is absurd to say, that an individual has any degree of true submission to God, and still indulges in the commission of any known sin. To suppose that true submission is consistent with any degree of known sin, is to overlook the very nature of submission. Submission belongs to the will, and consists in the supreme devotion of the heart to the whole known will of God. Now how manifestly absurd it is to say, that a man can be supremely devoted, or submissive to the will of God, and still indulge in some things, or even in one thing that is inconsistent with God's will. Whoever, therefore, among you, lives in the indulgence of any known sin, of heart or life, has not one particle of true religion. This is not a rhetorical flourish. It is not a random, hap-hazard assertion. It is the unalterable truth of God. By this I do not mean, that if a man is sometimes overcome by temptation, and falls into occasional sins, that this demonstrates that his character is that of an unregenerate sinner. But I do mean, that where any form or degree of sin is indulged, where it is habitual, connived at, allowed, and practiced by the mind, there is not one vestige of true religion.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1841 paragraph 253 237 Lecture XXIX. The True Service of God ...

2. It consists in the supreme devotion of the whole being to the same end to which God devotes all his attributes--to promote his own happiness and glory, not because it is his own, but because it is infinitely the greatest good in the universe--to promote the holiness and happiness of moral beings, and the universal good of sentient existence, is that to which God has devoted his entire being.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1841 paragraph 447 357 Lectures XXXI. & XXXII. A Seared Conscience- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

22. By mocking God in prayer and in other devotional duties. This also is one of the ways in which church officers and especially ministers of the gospel, are exceedingly in danger of searing their conscience. If they suffer their religious exercises to become professional rather than strictly devotional, if they suffer themselves to pray and preach and exhort because it is their business, when their hearts are not deeply imbued with the spirit of devotion, then conscience soon becomes so seared that they are ripe for ecclesiastical denunciation, excision, opposition to revivals, and almost every species of reform. How often and how distressingly has this been manifest. And what is worse than all, the conscience becomes so seared, that for these things they will not suffer reproof if faithfully administered and with the utmost kindness, without manifesting great indignation and perhaps a spirit of revenge. O, with what pain do I say this of some of the ministers of the everlasting gospel.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1842 paragraph 76 13 Lecture I. Thy Will Be Done ...

4. I now observe, that motives are addressed to the mind, either through the Intelligence or the Sensibility, and in no other way. By this I mean that by the use of the Intellect, or through the medium of the feelings, does the mind perceive any thing which it accounts an object of choice. The Sensibility or feelings, invite the will or mind to seek the gratification of the appetites or propensities as an end, or for the mere sake of the gratification. The Intelligence points to God, and his law, and the Reason affirms that the mind ought to obey God, rather than to seek the gratification of the Sensibility. Through the Intelligence is revealed to the mind the existence, character, and claims of God. And the law of universal benevolence is seen by the Intelligence to be obligatory. Now to will in accordance with the impressions of the Sensibility, and seek as the great end of life the gratification of the propensities, is what the Bible denominates the "carnal mind," or "minding of the flesh." This is the very essence of sin. It is enmity against God. Let it be understood, then, that sin consists in the committal of the will, or in the devotion by the will of the whole being to self-interest or self-gratification. This choice of our own gratification as the supreme end of life is the wicked heart, and all the forms of sin are only developments, and necessary results of this supreme choice or intention of the mind. This is total moral depravity--enmity against God--entire consecration to self-gratification.

VI. What holiness is.

1. It is, in a word, the obedience of the will or heart to the law of God as this law lies revealed in the Intelligence. I have just said that sin consists in the supreme devotion of the will, and consequently of all the powers of the mind to self-gratification. On the contrary, holiness consists in the supreme devotion of the will, and consequently of the whole being to the glory of God, and the good of the universe. This entire consecration to the glory of God and the good of the universe is the whole of virtue in any being, and in every world.

I now come to a direct examination of the text, and inquire,

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1842 paragraph 175 115 Lecture II. Danger of Delusion ...

Now beloved, if you intend to preserve the idea and practice of genuine religion, be careful that you do not either in theory or practice adopt the great error of papacy and assume that some human standard is to be regarded as an authoritative exposition of the word of God. Read your Bible. Let the opinions of good men, whether expressed in catechisms, confessions of faith, or in any other way, orally or in writing, have with you what weight they really deserve, but call no man master in your views of theology, and let inspiration alone be authoritative with you in matters of faith and practice.

13. Aim at nothing short of universal consecration to God. By universal consecration, I intend the devotion of your whole being and of all over which you have control to the service and glory of God. And remember that nothing short of entire consecration is true religion--that if you hold back any thing from God, you are and must be, for the time being, in a state of rebellion against Him.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1842 paragraph 386 371 Lecture VI. Wisdom Justified of Her Children ...

2. This is exactly synonymous with true religion. Virtue, holiness, or true religion, consists, as has often been shown in my lectures, in disinterested benevolence. Benevolence consists in good willing, choosing, or intending, or, in other words, in devoting ones self to the promotion of the highest good of being for its own sake. In other words, true religion is the devotion of ones being to the glory of God and the highest good of his kingdom. This is wisdom. Therefore all truly religious persons are wise. All else are fools in the Bible sense of the term, devoting themselves to some unreasonable end and course of life.

II. That which is wise and true will be justified and approved by the wise.

1. All the truly wise or truly pious have one and the same end in view. It is this fact which distinguishes them as pious persons.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1842 paragraph 398 371 Lecture VI. Wisdom Justified of Her Children ...

9. The same doctrines are understood differently by different persons, according to their different states of mind. The doctrine of self-denial, is understood by some, not as the deposing of self, the enthroning of God in the heart, the devotion of the whole being to Him, and doing every thing, even eating and drinking, for his glory. But to them, the doctrine of self-denial, is a system of penance, of outward retrenchments, of bodily mortifications, a denial and trampling down, of the very nature of man. Fastings, celibacy, and multitudes of monkish tricks, seem to be indispensable to their ideas of self-denial. They do not understand that in all these things, to what extremes soever they may be carried, there is not necessarily one particle of Christian self-denial. But these are oftentimes nothing else than the manifestations of a legal spirit, as may be seen in this. They are connected with an acid and vexed state of mind, a spirit of complaining and censoriousness--a disposition to complain of every body that does not fall in with their particular views, and come up to their particular standard.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1843 paragraph 151 129 Lecture III. Selfishness ...

3. But these are, self-evidently, opposite choices and therefore cannot co-exist in the same mind. Is it possible that there can be two supreme, ultimate conflicting choices in exercise by the same mind, at the same time? This cannot be.

I may add that benevolence and selfishness regard and treat every perceived interest in the universe, in an order exactly the opposite of each other. Benevolence regards God's interests first, and aims at his glory as the supreme good; next the well being of the universe; then of this world; afterwards of its own nation; then of its own community; next of its own family; and lastly of itself. Now selfishness exactly reverses all this. The selfish man places self first, and regards his own interest as supreme; then he regards the interest of his family and special friends, but only so far as supreme devotion to himself on the whole prompts; next he regards his own community or city in opposition to all other communities and cities, whenever their interests clash; then he regards his own nation, and is what men call very patriotic, and would sacrifice the interests of all other nations, just as far as they interfere with his own; and so he progresses till finally, God and his interests find the last place in his regards. That this is so, is a simple matter of fact as every body knows, and how then is it possible that these two opposite choices should co-exist in the same mind? Believe it, who can.

IV. Several evidences of selfishness.

1. A want of zeal for God's interests. Men are always zealous for that which they supremely choose, and if they are not zealous for God's honor, it proves that it is not the object of their supreme regard. To deny this is absurd.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1843 paragraph 175 129 Lecture III. Selfishness ...

Remember that selfishness consists in obeying the propensities, appetites, passions, and desires.--This devotion to self gratification developes itself in a great variety of ways without changing its character. With one, one propensity predominates, with another, another. One for example is an epicure. His desire for pleasant dishes predominates over everything else, and he does not value money only as it contributes to his gratification. Another is a miser, and is entirely too much devoted to the desire of wealth to be an epicure. Indeed, he thinks his ruling passion contemptible. One is fond of dress, and values money only as it contributes to the gratification of this desire. This is his form of selfishness. He thinks of it all the year round, and labors with his eye on self gratification in this form. Right over against this, another is fond of power or influence to such an extent as to wonder that any can be fond of such a trifling gratification as dress affords. But he is as much enslaved by his desire of power as the other by his devotion to dress, and is equally selfish. Again, some are so fond of reputation, as to do anything that public sentiment requires, rather than to fail of popularity. This is their form of selfishness.--Their reputation is preferred to the well-being of the universe. But others have such a large development of some appetite or passion as to sacrifice reputation for it. For example: the drunkard.--He regards his appetite for intoxicating drinks above everything else, and his character weighs not a straw when brought into competition with this. Now each of these different forms of selfishness is a violation of the law of God. One just as much so as the other. They all lord it over the will.--And yet those devoted to one form take great credit to themselves because they are not devoted to all the others. The truth is in all cases the sin lies in the indulgence of any appetite, desire or propensity whatever, in opposition to the law of love.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1843 paragraph 222 193 Lecture IV. Christian Character ...

2. We have seen that the old or wicked heart is the same as the carnal mind, and that the carnal mind or wicked heart consists in the devotion of the will to self gratification. Self gratification is the ultimate end chosen.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1843 paragraph 325 309 Lecture VI. Putting on Christ ...

4. It implies such a sympathy with Him, as to beget an imitation of Him. A profound sympathy is necessary to, and naturally begets imitation.

III. Some of the essential conditions of obedience to this command.

1. The first thing essential, is a deep and intense study of his character, until the great principle of his action is clearly perceived--the real idea of the end for which he lived clearly developed. Persons attempting to imitate others, must give the closest attention. This is essential to the success of a dramatic actor, or any other artist. Who, when looking at a picture by West, and observing all its delicate shadings, has not been struck with the deep attention which the artist must have given to his subject? One shade is stronger, and another weaker, exactly exhibiting the position, and form of each limb, and the various expressions of countenance and attitude, appropriate to the circumstances of the person represented. Now in order to express these things, by colorings on the canvass, the artist must have studied most intensely. So it is with a good actor. He does not merely commit and rehearse his piece as a school-boy does on the stage. He does not stand and spout it off in recitation style, but seeks to represent his character in dress, habit, spirit, style, manner, and every thing, and in this consists the perfection of the dramatic art. Now the Apostle commands us thus to put on Christ--to imitate Him--to give intense thought to get at the true idea of his character, and to commit the mind fully to the same end, to which He was devoted. To enjoy a piece of poetry, you must put yourself into the same state of mind in which the author was when he wrote it. Then as you read it, your tone and manner will naturally represent him. This is the difficulty with so many in reading hymns. They read as though they did not at all apprehend the sentiment, and without emotion. The reason is, either they have not the spirit of devotion, or they have not at all given attention to the sentiment of the hymn. But to represent Christ we must catch his spirit, and make his grand end and aim ours. Then we shall act as He would under like circumstances.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1843 paragraph 547 526 Lecture X. Fulness There is in Christ ...

9. But, in order thus to keep us, He must possess such surpassing loveliness, and radiate such charms, as to draw away the soul from all other fascinations and lovers. He must be able, as it were, to make us sick of love, so that we would follow Him through any trials, and all seductive influences, unattracted by any of them, from our stedfast devotion to his love. We need somebody to draw us. If God should flash his livid lightnings, and hurl his blazing thunderbolts upon us; if He should roll up into our faces the lurid fires of perdition, it might amaze and horrify us, but it would do no good--it would not draw us to Him--it would not call out our love. When Elijah passed by Elisha, he cast his mantle upon him, and forth with, Elisha left the oxen and all, and went after Elijah. I have often thought it seemed to charm him. So Christ, as He passes by a soul, seems, shall I say, so to bewitch it, that it would seem as if He could lead it even through hell. I do not know but He could. If circumstances demand the sacrifice, it would kiss his cross, and say, drive your nails and crucify me. I willingly endure it for Christ's sake, "who loved me and gave Himself for me." Oh, we do not want a legal Savior, but one "in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," in whom we are complete, whose beauties can ravish and enchain our hearts. What is a Unitarian Savior good for? Pooh! Not such do we need, but one who can so captivate us, that if a thousand racks and gibbets stood in the way, they would not deter us from following Him whithersoever He goeth.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1843 paragraph 735 722 Lecture XIV. Joy in God ...

1. This state of mind is indispensable to usefulness. A man cannot be truly useful in the world--cannot do what is needed to be done--cannot make the world holy and happy by his influence, till he is thus. He cannot truly represent God, promote genuine religion, or enforce the claims of piety on man, till he is thus. He may have much zeal, create conviction, produce excitement, but he does not and cannot lead the soul to God. He does not know what true religion is in his own experience, and he cannot tell others what it is, however clear his intellect may be, and sway their minds under the power of truth, for he is a stranger to that honest, hearty, deep-felt conviction of the truth, and that personal consecration, devotion, and experience of the joy flowing therefrom, without which, commonly all efforts are in vain. His life, conversation, conduct, and preaching, will not exemplify true religion without this experience.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1845 paragraph 287 269 Lectures VI. & VII.The Church Bound to Convert the World- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

4. It implies that this is their only work, that the only business they have on the earth is to glorify God in the world's conversion. They are to do or say nothing, and be nothing, more or less than is conducive to this end. To this their whole being, time, influence, and possessions are to be consecrated. In that solemn parting hour, Christ doubtless meant to give them His whole mind in these few last words; Go, apply yourselves directly to the conversion of the world, and finish the great work which I have begun. I have given you the example; let your eye too be single, and your devotion unwearied and entire.

IV. I am in the next place to consider the conditions of obedience to this command.

1. The first condition which I mention is, hearty and entire consecration to this work. The church will never accomplish it, until they go forth in the true spirit of the requirement, being devoted with a single eye to this work as Christ was. By this it is not intended that every Christian should be a preacher of the gospel, for there are a great many kinds of work to be done. Preaching is but a small part of the labor. Printing, and writing, the mechanic arts, agriculture, commerce, merchandise, and in short all the useful employments of this world are to be employed by the church as parts of this great work. But they are all to be pursued with the same end, that is, to convert the world.

Again, not only must ministers be consecrated to this work, but lay-men and women also. Whatever the immediate occupation of each individual is, let him pursue it with the same singleness of eye, and entire consecration to the great end of the world's conversion that ministers are bound to have in preaching the gospel. Everybody understands that ministers ought to preach for the glory of God, and ought to consecrate themselves to the work of the world's conversion, that this is their great business, and that they really apostatize in heart from their work whenever they fail of giving themselves up heart and soul to it. Now this is true of ministers; and it is equally true of all Christians. That Christian who tills his ground, or stands behind his counter, or writes, or prints, or does anything else, is bound to be as entirely consecrated to the glory of God and the world's conversion, as the minister ought to be, and unless he is he can never be saved. Lay-men and women judge right in respect to what is required of ministers in this matter, but they should understand that precisely the same is required of them. Until this is recognized by the church at large, and until the followers of Christ in every sect consecrate themselves to this work, with as single an eye as that which ministers are bound to have, the work can never be performed.

2. Another condition is, union of effort. By united effort I mean the opposite of sectarian effort. By union among Christians I do not mean that they must all be in all respect of one opinion, but that they should be one in heart, and in respect to doctrinal opinions be agreed in all the fundamental points, also be agreed in tolerating each other, and allowing each other the most perfect liberty of opinion in respect to all points not fundamental. They must agree to differ on minor points without controversy or jangling. They must love each other so intensely and labor for the world's conversion so sincerely as not at all to stick on any of the minor points of Christian doctrine. If the church waits till all her members think alike on minor points, the world will never be converted; or if she expects to convert the world while cut up into sects and jangling parties, she is entirely deceived. A sectarian church can never convert the world to God, any more than so many Bramins could. If they convert them to their respective parties, this is by no means converting them to God; it only makes them sectarians. I am humbly of opinion, that until union prevails in the church in the sense above described, the world can never be converted. But more of this in another place.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1846 paragraph 26 19 Lecture I. The Nature of Impenitence and the Measure of Its Guilt ...

It is a great mistake, to suppose that impenitent sinners are not devotional. They are most profoundly and perfectly so. You could not ask for more perfect specimens of devotion to a given object--but the object in their case is their own self. It cannot be said that they fall short of entire consecration. With them consecration is never unsteady, fitful, imperfect. Self being their idol, the worship they pay is always ardent, hearty, and consistent with their whole life. Furthermore, the impenitent man consecrates not only his own efforts and interests to himself, but the interests of every other being--of God as far as he can, and of his fellow beings also. All sentient beings in the universe within his reach are laid under contribution to minister to his supreme deity--self. He cares not for God, only as he can make God subservient to himself. He would pray to God, if he could thereby make God his own servant--not otherwise. If he does good to any of his fellow beings, you may be sure he has himself for the ultimate object--this is all; he cares for nothing in the universe, except so far as he can make it subservient to himself.

3. Impenitence is a state of self-exaltation. In this state the man sets himself above everything else--even above God, and every other being or interest in the universe. Every impenitent sinner makes his own interest and his own will supreme; neither God nor angels, earth nor friends, are placed above self; all are placed in his esteem below himself, and made to bow down in homage and subservience to his own shrine.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1848 paragraph 402 354 Lecture VI. Pride of Heart Deceives ...

And is it strange that God also should ask for the heart? Has He not given us His, in such forms as most impressively demand the reciprocal devotion of ours?

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1849 paragraph 454 442 Lecture X. The Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of True Christianity ...

III. What is implied in this state of mind.

1. Consecration to the good of being, a real devotion of one's self to this object.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1849 paragraph 459 442 Lecture X. The Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of True Christianity ...

Now with this universal law of mind in view, consider the great end which Christ placed before Himself. You can now understand His devotion to this great end; His readiness to make sacrifices for its attainment; you see how He could despise all the shame and endure all the pains, never shrinking for one moment from anything whatever which He had to encounter.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1851 paragraph 85 61 Lecture II. Awaking from The Sleep of Spiritual Death ...

Such language will perhaps shock many of you, yet it is only the simple statement of facts. In reply, he was told that the notions he had justly deemed so absurd were not God's teachings but man's. I assured him those things were drawn from human creeds and catechisms, not from the Bible. He was confounded, and thrown at once utterly out of his position of infidelity. He saw that he had been rejecting the Bible for reasons which had no basis in the real teachings of that book. In the issue of this reaction upon his mind you will rejoice to learn that on that very day he was converted to God.

4. And now, beloved, if you would reach the truth on this great matter of the sinner's spiritual death, you must compare scripture with scripture. You must resort to scripture to explain itself. Pursuing this method you learn that this death is a minding of the flesh, a walking after the flesh, and consequently a self inflicted death--a death of voluntary opposition to God because it is a voluntary consecration of self to sin.

III. The nature of the resurrection here spoken of, may be learned from the nature of the death to which it stands opposed.

1. It is arising from the state of death described. Of course the rising must correspond to the death. Since therefore the death in question consists in a voluntary devotion to sin, involving a moral stupor, and an intense dislike of God and of His claims; so the rising from such a death must be a voluntary rising of the mind to a sense of its responsibilities to God and a voluntary placing of itself under God's influence, in the attitude of obedience and submission.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1851 paragraph 119 104 Lecture III. Jesus Christ Doing Good ...

5. The benevolent mind regards the happiness of being as a great good. It seeks this good and voluntarily makes this seeking of others good the great business of its own existence. Now I have heard people say that they regarded the idea of benevolence as a pure abstraction. Let them go and talk in this strain to a mother. I wonder if the idea of benevolently seeking the good of her children, is a mere abstraction to her. Go and ask her if she really knows anything about devoting herself to her family. Tell her you believe that idea is nothing better than a respectable abstraction. Tell her it may sound well in talk and might seem somewhat noble and self-sacrificing if it were only real; but assure her that nobody can ever have the least confidence in its sincerity--that all the world knows that every man and every woman too are supremely selfish, and there is no such thing in reality as loving others as ourselves, or as devoting ourselves to others good except so far as we can see selfish good resulting for our motive and reward. Go and talk to some simple-hearted mother in this strain. Will you convince her that she knows nothing about devotion to the interests of her children?

I can understand how this subject may perplex some minds. A young man said to me today--"Does a selfish, wicked man understand what it is to be devoted to the good of others? Can he have any just idea of what this is?"

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1851 paragraph 120 104 Lecture III. Jesus Christ Doing Good ...

To meet this question, you may take that form of benevolence which we often see in ungodly parents. They know what it is to have their hearts bound up in the happiness of their children. Although in this very parental affection, their minds are in a perfectly selfish state towards God, yet this devotion to the happiness of their children is a positive reality to them--none in all the world perhaps is more so. Now just enlarge this idea; suppose this devotion which even ungodly parents feel towards their children were to expand the scope and range of its regards and embrace every neighbor--friend or foe; then all the men of one's nation; and next all the human family: would not this be essentially real benevolence?

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1851 paragraph 130 104 Lecture III. Jesus Christ Doing Good ...

Devotion to other's good is a very simple thing. When our devotion to the production of happiness is not restricted to ourselves, but we labor for other's good, and love to promote the good of others not less than our own, this is an intelligible thing; and this is true benevolence--real religion.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1851 paragraph 173 157 Lecture IV. The Wicked Heart Set to do Evil ...

Or suppose the case of a human government which offers rewards to offenders on condition of their returning to obedience. The real spirit of the offer goes the length of asking the sincere devotion of their hearts to the best good of the government. But they may take a wholly selfish view of the case, and determine to accept the proposal only just far enough to secure the rewards, and only for the sake of the rewards. The Ruler wants and expects the actual sympathy of their hearts--their real good-will; and this being given, would love to reward them most abundantly; but how can He be satisfied with them if they are altogether selfish?

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1853 paragraph 32 18 Lecture I. Prayer and Labor for the Gathering of The Great Harvest ...

Hence it is implied in honest prayer for this object that we are really committed to the work, and that we have given ourselves up most sincerely and entirely to do all we can for Christ and his cause on earth. We are always on hand, ready for any labor, or any suffering. For, plainly, if we have not this mind, we need not think to pray to any good purpose. It would be but a sorry and insulting prayer, to say--"Lord, send somebody else to do all the hard work, and let me do little or nothing." Everybody knows that such a prayer would only affront God and curse the offerer. Hence sincere prayer for Christ's cause implies that you are willing to do any thing you can do to promote its interests, in the actual and absolute devotion of all your powers and resources for this object. You may not withhold even your own children. Nothing shall be too dear for you to offer on God's altar.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1853 paragraph 479 465 Lecture X. Losing One's First Love ...


I. First love involves sincere devotion of heart to God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1853 paragraph 480 465 Lecture X. Losing One's First Love ...

Of course it includes all that such devotion implies;--confidence in God; sympathy with His benevolence; in short, it implies just what is implied when a wife is truly devoted to her husband and when true benevolence underlies all.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1853 paragraph 482 465 Lecture X. Losing One's First Love ...

2. Again, this first love will manifest itself in an intense love for the ordinances of God's house. It will beget a lively interest in all the scenes and places where God is wont to meet the soul; where so to speak, He has an appointment to meet His people to bless them. How sweetly the Sabbath rises on one who is in his first love! This, he says, is one of my best and most blessed days; my own Lord's day and I may surely meet Him this day according to His own arrangement. How sweet the worship of God's house! All incomprehensible to those who never relish it! How can they expect to understand what they never experienced? I well remember how my own mind was impressed on the first Sabbath after my conversion. I had been in that congregation for some time; I had led the choir--had taken the same sort of interest that other sinners do. But now my heart was so drawn out to God that I wanted to keep my eyes shut all the day. I thought how I had led the choir without any real devotion. Indeed I had so much to think of, I felt that I could not open my eyes to have my mind diverted to external objects at all. The worship and ordinances of God's house were sweet beyond expression.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1853 paragraph 488 465 Lecture X. Losing One's First Love ...

4. When persons have left their first love, they are often more anxious to obtain comfort in religion than to be reinstated in communion with God, so as to have power with Him and a holy heart. Once they knew the comfort of public worship and of secret devotion. Now they know very little indeed about comfort, except as they find it in the hope that they shall yet be restored to see again the light of their Savior's face. When they lived near the Lord, how often were their hearts borne aloft as if enraptured with heavens' own music. But let their love die away, and with all their musical taste and cultivation, they get but little indeed of the rapture of soul they once found in Zion's songs. Now all their joys are in the music; they have lost all else.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1854 paragraph 184 172 Lecture V. What Men Highly Esteem, God Abhors ...

God regards nothing as virtue except devotion to the right ends. The right end is not one's own, but the general good. Hence God's rule requires virtue, while man's rule at best only restrains vice. All human governments are founded on this principle, as all who study the subject know. They do not require benevolence, they only restrain selfishness. In the foundation principles of our government, it is affirmed that men have certain inalienable rights, one of which is the right to pursue each his own happiness. This is affirmed to be an inalienable right, and is always assumed to be right in itself, provided it does not infringe on others' rights of happiness. But God's rule requires positive benevolence and regards nothing else as virtue except devotion to the highest good. Man's rule condemns nothing, provided man so restrains himself as not to infringe on others' rights.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1854 paragraph 228 172 Lecture V. What Men Highly Esteem, God Abhors ...

7. The good Christian, in the world's esteem, is never abrupt, never aggressive, yet he is greatly admired. He has a selfish devotion to pleasing men, than which nothing is more admired. I heard of a minister who had not an enemy in the world. He was said to be most like Christ among all the men they knew. I thought it strange that a man so like Christ should have no enemies, for Christ,--more like Himself than any other man can be--had a great many enemies and very better enemies too. Indeed it is said, "If any man will live godly in Christ Jesus, he shall suffer persecution." But when I came to learn the facts of the case I understood the man. He never allowed himself to preach anything that could displease even Universalists. In fact he had two universalists in his Session. In the number of his session were some Calvinists also, and he must by no means displease them. His preaching was indeed a model of its kind. His motto was--Please the people--nothing but please the people. In the midst of a revival, he would leave the meetings and go to a party; why? To please the people.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1854 paragraph 242 232 Lecture VI. Variety in the Service Offered to God ...

Another mark is that their hope of heaven is more or less strong according as they find themselves more or less strict in their religious duties, and on the other hand is more or less weak according as they indulge their appetites more and are less thorough in their devotions. With the decline of hope comes a revival of fear; and following this, fresh efforts to bring up in the line of duties and strictness. When this is pretty well brought up, hope revives again, the spirit of duty-doing flags; appetite conquers; then comes awful fear again; and so the wheel revolves, bringing up each development in its turn, in one perpetual round.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1854 paragraph 494 476 Lecture XIII. The Ways of Sin Hard; Of Holiness, Pleasant ...

To say all in a word, it is true devotion of heart and life to God. It supposes that instead of living to yourself, you live to God. You seek to consecrate all your powers to His service only. According to the Bible, true religion is supreme love to God, and equal, impartial love to man. It is not a state of passive emotion, but of supreme devotion to God. It manifests itself in good will to all beings, and in a voluntary committal of all our powers to God and to the good of all His creatures, so far as they become known to us.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1854 paragraph 495 476 Lecture XIII. The Ways of Sin Hard; Of Holiness, Pleasant ...

II. True religion implies many things.


1. In all the case of all sinners it must imply repentance--the turning of the heart away from all iniquity, and the utter rejection of all sin. This must be the first great step from sin to holiness.
 
2. It also must imply confidence in God and in His general veracity. When the heart turns round to become God's friend, it must confide in Him as good and as truthful.
 
3. There will also be a state of warm and lively confidence in Jesus Christ, embracing all those points in which He reveals Himself as our Savior from sin and condemnation.
 
4. There will also be a state of universal acquiescence in the providence of God. Believing in the fact that God rules in nature over all the external and internal worlds, the mind accepts this fact with joy and with trust. The mind being in a state of trust towards God and of true devotion to His will, this acquiescence in His general providence sits easy and is natural. Hence there will be an earnest sympathy with God in all His ways.

III. On the other hand, we must enquire, What is sin?


1. Sin is devotion to self. Sin puts self in the place of God as the supreme object of regard and affection. It values nothing except as related to self. It makes self-gratification its first law.
 
2. Of course this implies opposition to God and stubborn impenitence. The man cleaves pertinaciously to self, and is ready to sacrifice everything else to promote selfish ends. He is utterly distrustful of God, and has no sympathy with His character, government and ways.

IV. Sinning, unrestrained by gospel grace, and made the law of life as it always is in the unrenewed soul, will of course imply a supreme devotion to some forms of selfish gratification.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1854 paragraph 535 518 Lecture XIV. The Indications and The Guilt of Backsliding ...

Now in view of all these indications, will you be so kind to yourself, each of you, as to ask--Is this my state? Can you go on your knees before God and say--O, my God, thou knowest I am not lukewarm. How is this?


16. I have still to name one more indication--a life which fails to make the impression on all who see it that religion is your chief business--the one thing needful. For if religion is your chief concern and the thing of deepest interest with you, it is most certain and inevitable that your life will show it. Your life will make the impression on all who know you, that your heart is full of God and of love. The true Christian is a light which cannot be hid. His life will make its impression. He will be known as a zealous man, a self-denying man, as a charitable man, as a holy man--as one who lives in God and God in him.

But I must pass now to say,

III. That a lukewarm state is a most guilty one.


1. As a general thing, these professors of religion are enlightened. The fact that they have publicly professed religion evinces this. By how much the greater their light, by how much the greater their guilt.
 
2. It is also a most hypocritical state. Backsliders are hypocrites I do not mean that they have never been converted, but I do mean that they profess towards God what is not true. Their heart and their life believe their profession. They are living, walking hypocrites!
 
3. It is, moreover, a perjured state. That Christian has taken his oath to love and serve God, and has done it under most solemn circumstances--even at the communion table with the symbols of Christ's body and blood in his very hands! What has he sworn? to live for God; to observe all His statutes and all ordinances; often the very terms of his covenant specify attending to all the general meetings of the church, and performing each and all of his duties as a member of the body. Thus he solemnly swears--but thus he never does. At each successive communion season he renews his oath, only to break it again during all the next succeeding interval. He solemnly swore that he would renounce all ungodliness and every worldly lust--that he would walk soberly, righteously and godly in this evil world;--yet how constantly and universally does he violate each point in the solemn affirmation! Do I speak too strongly when I say that this man perjures himself? I am well aware of the technical distinction made in courts of law whereby it is held that there may be much falsehood without perjury--it being essential to perjury that the accused should deliberately swear falsely on a point material to the issue. But let me ask you if the oath of the backslider is not taken deliberately? What could be more so? Let me also ask if it is not to a point most material to the main issue? Surely it is. The very thing he swore he would do is the very thing he does not do. How horrible must such perjury be! Suppose you go into court and you see there a witness taking the stand and swearing to a lie--to what you know is a lie--and to what you know he knows is a lie! Would you not cry out, How awful!--What have we come to! But what is this compared with that we see at the communion table? See there;--the table is spread, God's holy presence is solemnly invoked--the minister takes the holy Bible, and expounds the nature of the oath to be taken;--then backsliders come forward and solemnly swear to perform all their Christian duties;--solemnly avow their allegiance to Jesus, the crucified--profess supreme love to him, solemnly testify that they believe in his blood as the ground of their forgiveness and that they owe him the devotion a thousand hearts and lives;--they solemnly covenant to walk with their brethren in labor and prayer--to attend the prayer-meetings;--but when the hour comes, he is not there! Another season comes round; he is not there! He almost never comes. It is a very rare thing that he even pretends to do any one of the many overt tangible things embraced in his vow. He does indeed come to meeting occasionally on the Sabbath. But this costs him no particular self-denial. On the Sabbath there is nothing else he can do. He may not work his farm, or drive his trade, or open his store. So on the Sabbath he will come to the house of God. But really, and in the spirit of it, he breaks every material point of his solemn covenant. At the next communion he is ready as ever to renew it; the communion season once past, he is ready to trample it under his heedless foot again! Is not this a most guilty state?
 
4. Still further, it is guilty because it is a most injurious state. It does infinite mischief. Nothing so discourages a minister as to be shut up to the necessity of reaching the impenitent over the heads of backsliders. He preaches that religion is the chief concern; they deny it. He says, it is and should be the principal business; they give him the lie. He says, religion gives its possessor peace; they reply--that is all a lie. He holds forth that Jesus has died for sinners, and those who are bought with his blood must devote their whole life and heart to his service; they reply--we don't hold, in practice, to any such things. He preaches to sinners that the hearts of Christians are bleeding with sympathy for them; they can very promptly say--that is utterly false, for we know better. Let the minister say what he will to paint the glories of heaven, or portray the woes of hell; to urge the need and the value of gospel salvation, or to exhibit the power and the reality of religion;--the backslider rises before him and gives the lie to all he can say. Alas, it is almost a hopeless task to preach so! For to make the matter still worse--these professed Christians are supposed to know from experience. They have tried it and have gone back to the world again. The minister may have a good theory, but it don't work in practice, and there is the proof. Or he may have some professional motive for such preaching; but, say they, do we not know that the proof of these things must lie in experience!

Hence, when backsliders come upon the stand and swear that not one word of God's can be believed--that all His promises are a humbug--that all the time prospects and hopes of the young convert are blasted, and he must needs return to the world again for life and joy; how fearfully injurious must this be!


5. It must be most injurious, because it hardens sinners in the worst way, and begets in them a contempt for religion. They see those who profess it go to the communion table and carefully maintain the forms of religion; but then they also see these same persons perjure themselves on all these vital points of their profession. They know that these professors have no deep interest in religion--no feeling about it; they see enough to convince them that their profession is nothing better than a blasphemous humbug. When they see masses of those who have made the solemn professions, absenting themselves from prayer-meetings, and really doing nothing to promote the objects they profess to love so deeply, is it any wonder that they are hardened? Is it strange that they are made skeptics? I know, and everybody who examines the subject must know, that the backsliding of professed Christians does more to beget skepticism than all the writings of infidels. I have seen places--I have been called to preach in places, where the conduct of professors has begotten an almost universal skepticism, so that the very foundations of Bible truth had to be laid over again. Nothing could be done in preaching the gospel till you had gone back to first principles; till you had rolled baleful influence of so much backsliding and apostasy, and shown people that they must examine the Bible for themselves and on their own responsibility--let apostates believe it as they might.
 
6. Backsliding does more injury to souls than any thing else, because it leads to false hopes. Men will form their notions on what religion is from the life of his professors. If this life believes religion, giving a false view of it, multitudes are deluded. Thus the backslider does much to confirm both himself and others in a false hope. Suppose a pastor becomes lukewarm, and that then his deacons also become lukewarm, their life and spirit still remain the general standard of piety. The masses, thinking themselves as good as the deacons and the minister, feel very much at ease in their state, and so go down in vast numbers to the depths of hell.

It is expected that young converts will be led by older and leading minds. The latter virtually say--We are older and have more experience than you; it befits you to follow rather than to lead us; modesty and humility are altogether becoming in the young. Thus backsliders throw themselves directly in the way of young converts. Twice within a few years have I heard ministers say--"O, if I could only take these young converts away by themselves, how easily could I train them up for God and form in them habits of earnest Christian activity. But now, what can I do? If the older, backslidden members are not kept foremost, they will become chafed, restive, and perhaps will wound the feelings of the young converts; while if the converts are kept back and under their influence, they will be frozen to death. If we could only take these young converts along as they now wish to go, what a noble church they would make, and what living, working Christians?"

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1854 paragraph 585 574 Lecture XVI. The Primitive Prayer-Meeting ...

II. Its characteristics.


1. Of the characteristics of this meeting, the first to be noticed is that the brethren and sisters were all present. This is a prominent peculiarity, and deserves distinct and special notice. The sacred historian is careful to call attention to the fact. "Peter stood up among them, the number of the names together were about an hundred and twenty." All the eleven were there, "with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brethren." Not one could be spared. What, suppose ye, Christ would have thought, if only two or three had come, and the rest had been too indifferent or too much engrossed in other business to be there? They did not allow any other business to detain them. They honored God enough to meet on his special call and to stay till the object of the meeting was accomplished.
 
2. They were all interested in the object. This is manifest in the fact that they all came and all remained together so long, and indeed until the object was attained. Not only were they all there, but all held on through those long sessions. This shows them really in earnest.
 
3. They expected the promised blessing. They knew Christ had promised it, and they believed his promise. Of course their faith became a strong and definite expectation.
 
4. Yet again, they were united. Over and over again, we are told they were all with one accord in one place. United in the one desire to obtain this great blessing, and of one heart in regard to the motives which led them to pray, there was the most entire unanimity, as if the whole company had but one heart, and that were strong and true in its impulse and purposes.
 
5. They were united in fraternal confidence. There is no hint of any loss or lack of confidence in each other. Hence they could edify each other. Their communion of soul was deep and precious.
 
6. They persevered. "These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication." They were instant in their prayer until the object was gained. They could not think of giving up and abandoning their effort before the blessing came. They said as Jacob in his wrestlings, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." What could they do without the Spirit! Besides, Christ had distinctly told them not to go until the blessing came.
 
7. I said that the brethren and sisters both were there. this was contrary to the doctrine and practice of the Jews then, and indeed is so to this day. They do not admit women to sit with themselves in their holy places, in their seasons of worship. They are allowed to occupy only the galleries, from which they may look down as spectators, not being expected to join as associate worshippers. In public acts of devotion they might have no part. Not so under the gospel. In Christ there must be no distinction between bond and free, male and female. All were to be one in him. All their old Jewish prejudices were discarded. This was a most important fact in the constitution of the Christian church. Until Christ came, no such meeting of brethren and sisters on the same level had been known. The particularity with which this circumstance is recorded, shows that a new era had opened. No partition wall is henceforth to thrust the female sex into the court of the woman, or into the distant galleries; all sexes are counted alike as brethren in Christ Jesus.
 
8. Observe also that there is no sectarian spirit or party spirit or party strife among them. No party prejudice was there; all were true Christian brethren. The division of the Christian church into parties and sects, now so great an evil, was then unknown. Men were not then stickling for little things, were not building up new denominations on a basis so unworthy as a mere difference in forms or even in the forms of a form. The controversies of later days about ordinances had not yet begun to distract and rend the body of Christ. Nor was there then any strife for leadership. Diotrephes and his sect had not then appeared in the Christian church.

You may think me censorious in having intimated that the ambition of leadership makes sects. I wish there was no truth in this intimation. But who does not know it to be but too sadly true!


9. Moreover, there was no caviling against the truth, or against judiciously proposed measures. Suspicion had no room in their kindred bosoms. They had no disposition to resist each other's prayer; there were none to whisper--I am not edified with this brother's prayer, or by the prayer of that sister. All with one accord, as well as all in one place! this must have been a charming season--a meeting in which loving hearts blended in holy sympathy.
 
10. It was, finally, a deeply earnest meeting. No apathetic souls were there, lagging and hanging as dead weights on the general heart of the assembly. All seemed to take as equally deep and warm interest in the great supplications they were convened to pour out before their ascended Lord for the great blessing of the Christian dispensation.

III. Results.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1855 paragraph 29 20 Lecture I. On Prayer ...

4. The objection to prayer that God is unchangeable, and therefore cannot turn aside to hear prayer, is altogether a fallacy and the result of ignorance. Consider what is the true idea of God's unchangeableness. Surely, it is not that his course of conduct never changes to meet circumstances; but it is this--that his character never changes; that his nature and the principles which control his voluntary action remain eternally the same. All his natural--all his moral attributes remain for ever unchanged. This is all that can rationally be implied in God's immutability.

Now, his hearing and answering prayer, imply no change of character--no change in his principles of action. Indeed, if you ask why he ever answers prayer at all, the answer must be, because he is unchangeable. Prayer brings the suppliant into new relations to God's kingdom; and to meet these new relations, God's unchangeable principles require him to change the course of his administration. He answers prayer because he is unchangeably benevolent. It is not because his benevolence changes, but because it does not change, that he answers prayer. Who can suppose that God's answering prayer implies any change in his moral character? For example, if a man, in prayer, repents, God forgives; if he does not repent of present sin, God does not forgive;--and who does not see that God's immutability must require this course at his hands? Suppose God did not change his conduct when men change their character and their attitude towards him. This would imply fickleness--an utter absence of fixed principles. His unchangeable goodness must therefore imply that when his creatures change morally, he changes his course and conforms to their new position. Any other view of the case is simply absurd, and only the result of ignorance. Strange that men should hold it to be inconsistent for God to change and give rain in answer to prayer, or give any needed spiritual blessings to those who ask them!

5. Intercourse with God is a necessity of moral beings, demanded by creatures as a necessity of their natures. No doubt this is true in heaven itself, and the fact that this want of their natures is so gloriously supplied there, makes heaven. The Bible represents spirits in heaven as praying. We hear them crying out--"How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (Rev. 6:10). True, their subjects of prayer are not in all respects the same as ours; we have things to pray for which they have no occasion to ask for themselves. They are neither sick nor sinful; but can you suppose they never pray, "Thy kingdom come?" Have they lost all sympathy with those interests of Zion? Far from it. Knowing more of the value of those interests, they no doubt feel more deeply their importance, and pray more earnestly for their promotion. From the nature of the case, God's treatment of the inhabitants of heaven must be conditioned on their voluntary course in regard to him and his kingdom. It must be governed and determined by their knowledge, their progress in knowledge, and their improvement of the means and powers at their command. Obviously their voluntary worship, gratitude, thanksgiving, and service of every sort, must vary their relations to God, and consequently, his course towards them. He will do many things to them and for them which he could not do if they did not pray, and praise, and love, and study, and labour. This must be true even in heaven, of apostles, and prophets, and of all glorified saints. God makes to them successive revelations of himself, each successively higher than the preceding, and all dependent on their voluntary devotion to him and to his glory. They are for ever advancing in his service, full of worship, praise, adoration, and this only prepares them the more to be sent on missions of love and service, and to be employed as the interests of God's kingdom require. Hence, we see that God's conduct towards saints in heaven depends on their own voluntary course and bearing towards him. This is a necessity of any and every moral system. If saints in heaven are moral agents, and God's government over them is also moral, all these results must follow. In this world sin exists; and in this fact we see an obvious necessity for this law of moral administration. But the holy in heaven are no less moral and responsible than the sinning on earth. The great object of God's administration is to assimilate moral beings to himself; hence, He must make his treatment of them depend on their moral course towards him.

In regard to saints on earth, how can God do them any good unless he can draw them to himself in prayer and praise? This is one of the most evident necessities that can be named. Men irresistibly feel the propriety of confession and supplication, in order to achieve forgiveness. This feeling lies among the primitive affirmations of the mind. Men know that if they would be healed of sin they must seek and find God.

II. But why pray so much and so often? Why the exhortation to pray always and not to faint?

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1857 paragraph 35 12 Lectures I. & II.Owing God- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

(2.) How much did He pay? Suppose there is a similar exigency upon you. You are a public officer. It devolves on you to sustain law by administering the penalty, or its equivalent. The law is broken; will you smite, or will you spare?

You have an only son, dear to your heart. Can you give him up to shame and to an agonizing death for the sake of safely pardoning those transgressors? Can you estimate how much a sacrifice of this sort would cost you?

(3.) God has bought you with a price. Bought? Did He not own you altogether before? Yes, but you had brought yourself into such relations to public justice that He must needs buy you again, or you are lost. Now, what are His rights as conditioned on His having paid the price of your soul -- paid it too by the blood of His own and only Son! Does not this purchase intensify His claims and augment them exceedingly?

Suppose you had violated the laws of this State, and the Governor had sacrificed his own son to deliver you. Would you not feel that he had fresh claims on you, immensely greater than ever before? You had no claims on him but those of your own wretchedness, and yet he gave heed to those claims. And yet all this, if true, would give us but a faint illustration of what God has done for you through the sacrifice of His Son. Have you ever considered how vast, how deep, how infinite your obligations to Him must be? Surely He has a right to your deep, unselfish, and infinite devotion. Christ died for all, that they who live by His death should not henceforth live to themselves, but to Him who hath loved them and given Himself for them. Ought you not to devote to Him a life thus saved -- a soul thus redeemed? What! Has He redeemed you from death that you might oppose Him and live to yourself? Do you not see that He has a claim on you for all your possible love and service? Surely there is no service possible on your part which is not most emphatically due to Him who hath loved and redeemed us.

(4.) God's rights are peculiar and infinitely great. They are peculiar, because none are altogether like them in kind; none can ever approach them in degree. In the broad field of human relations, there are some rights which are analogous, so much so that they aid us in understanding the nature of God's claims on us; yet none can be found in all respect like His. Thus for example no rights of property can be absolute save those of God. All other property-rights are only relative. My rights to my property are good against the claims of fellow-beings; but they are nothing against the claims of God. He owns me and mine. But my fellow-beings do not own either.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1857 paragraph 56 12 Lectures I. & II.Owing God- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

3. Now in the light of this great law will you renew your examination and ask -- What have I done today? Did you come to church with a heart really full of love to God? Unless you did, you have no right to put the external act to your own credit as a duty done for God. God requires, just as you see He ought to, that this and every other duty be done from a spirit of real, honest devotion -- in true love, and with an eye that looks only at His glory. Which of your duties have been performed in this spirit? Nothing less than this can be doing duty. It is God's right to claim that you should always devote yourself to His service with a single and pure intent to do all His will, and to promote His glory.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1858 paragraph 49 18 Lecture I. The Doom Of Those Who Neglect The Great Salvation ...

4. It is infinite folly to make the matter of personal salvation, only a secondary matter; for to do so is only to neglect it after all. Unless it has your whole heart, you virtually neglect it, for nothing less than your whole heart is the devotion due. To give it less than your whole heart is truly to insult God, and to insult the subject of salvation.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1858 paragraph 342 284 Lectures VIII. - X. The Blessedness Of The Merciful- No. 1 -- Blessedness Of The Pure In Heart- No. 2 -- Blessed Are The Persecuted- No. 3 ...

4. Our text, speaking of the heart as PURE, must mean by it, a committed state of mind -- morally committed to some chosen end. It cannot mean a mere executive volition, but must imply a state as distinct from a single executive volition, and of course a state of moral purity. A wicked heart is a mind in a state of devotion to self; a pure heart, a mind in a state of devotion to God. It is a state of moral purity, resulting from a committal of the soul to God. Of course it includes the affections which by this voluntary committal are drawn into sympathy with the will. The thing in which we are specially active is the committal of our whole mind to the will of God. The rest follows by natural laws.

II. Let us next consider some of the natural and necessary manifestations of a pure heart.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1858 paragraph 354 284 Lectures VIII. - X. The Blessedness Of The Merciful- No. 1 -- Blessedness Of The Pure In Heart- No. 2 -- Blessed Are The Persecuted- No. 3 ...

2. The words may bear another sense. They shall see God now by an inward spiritual apprehension of His character. So the Bible teaches. The Spirit of the Lord dwells with those of a pure heart. They are fully conscious of His presence. They see Him in His providences; not any visible form, but yet the real manifestations of His power and of His love. They are aware of His agency. So great is their sympathy with Him, they cannot fail of this. They feel His presence in their secret devotions. They know He manifests Himself to them otherwise than to the world. Often it is with them as if they saw God, even as our senses apprehend their objects, the eye, its sights, and the ear, its sounds. So we seem to receive a new sense when we come into such deep sympathy with God. We have a spiritual apprehension of Gods' presence and character.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1859 paragraph 118 90 Lecture III. On Self-Denial ...

8. To those of you who being yet in your sins, cannot conceive how you can ever enjoy God, and cannot even imagine how your heart can cleave to God, and call Him a thousand endearing names, and pour out your heart in love to Jesus, let me beg of you to consider that there is such communion with God -- there is such joy of His presence, and you may have it at the price of self-denial and whole-hearted devotion to Jesus; not otherwise. And why should you not make this choice? Already you are saying -- every cup of worldly pleasure is blasted -- dried up and worthless. Then let them go. Bid them away, and make the better choice of pleasures that are purer far and better and which endure forever.
 
 


 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1860 paragraph 27 9 Lectures I. & II.On Loving God- No. 1 -- On Love To Our Neighbor- No. 2 ...

3. It must be an abiding love. It must be a state of good-will, as distinguished from transient acts. A state of mind that is continuous must manifestly be implied and required.

II. I must next notice some things implied in this love.

1. If this love be good-will -- a perpetual purposing to promote the highest happiness of all, then it must imply a life devoted to this object. The love of the heart naturally and surely controls the life. Supreme love to God must therefore imply supreme devotion of the life to God, and by this I mean, to pleasing God and doing faithfully all His known will. If love be supreme and abiding, it must forever control the life and hold it to perpetual devotion, to the things that please God.

Here some will ask -- "What can we do for God? What should He care what we do?"

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1860 paragraph 28 9 Lectures I. & II.On Loving God- No. 1 -- On Love To Our Neighbor- No. 2 ...

Ah, do you assume that God does not care what we do? Did God have no care for it when those two young men shot down a father and mother in the field, and left their children orphans? To suppose this, were to suppose that He is no Father of His creatures at all.

2. Again, this law of love implies that we find our highest pleasure in seeking to know and do God's pleasure. If we have this love, it will be most grateful to us to please Him. It will be a richer joy to us to please God than to please ourselves. It will be our supreme pleasure to please God. We shall devote ourselves to pleasing Him and shall both seek and find our chief joy in this.

We sometimes see human beings so devoted to each other that they find their supreme pleasure in promoting each other's welfare. Such devotion, obedience to this great law implies, towards God.

3. Again, the exercise of this love implies a sympathy with whatever pleases God, so that anything that anybody does to please God will surely please us. We shall naturally have a great complacency with anything that pleases God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1860 paragraph 40 9 Lectures I. & II.On Loving God- No. 1 -- On Love To Our Neighbor- No. 2 ...

2. Then also there are governmental consequences. God must condemn those who deny to Him the love of their heart and the devotion of their life. He must regard them with holy displeasure. By all the love He bears to the best interest of His creatures, He must disown and be displeased with those who array themselves against Himself and His great family. He is bound to reveal to all His creatures His displeasure against those who hate both Him and them. He ought to make the fact of this displeasure as patent as He possibly can, for the happiness of the universe depends upon His revealing it most fully. He should make the revelations of His heart and of His hand against sin as nearly according to the right and justice of the case as He can.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1860 paragraph 72 9 Lectures I. & II.On Loving God- No. 1 -- On Love To Our Neighbor- No. 2 ...

8. Hence we should seek to requite those favors, doing all we can to promote the very objects to which those Christian friends have so devoted their wealth and their prayers.

So ministers who preach and their people who hear, should be mutally giving and receiving good, to and from each other. All of us, instead of being merely recipients of good from others, should strive to do good to others also, rendering back into their bosoms liberally.

9. Why should not this prinicple apply to all men towards God? Ye who have never cared for God; is it right that you should receive everything from God and make Him no returns of love and obedience? Have you no zeal for His honor and no devotion to His interests? He has nourished and brought you up as a child, and you have done nothing else but rebel against Him. Is that right? Why should you not rather say, God has given me talents and I must render back to Him in their use as I may have opportunity? Certainly you must regard God as your neighbor in this sense, that He has interests and rights, and you are under the highest obligations to requite Him for unnumbered favors.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1860 paragraph 109 91 Lectures III. & IV.Spiritual Delusion- No. 1 -- On Leaving One's First Love- No. 2 -- (This 2-part sermon was listed in the Table of Contents of the "Oberlin Evangelist" as "Spiritual Declension") ...


I. What the first love of the Christian really is.

1. It is in one word, devotion to God. It may be illustrated in many ways. You may take, for one, the devotion of a true wife to her husband. This is God's standing illustration. You find it everywhere in the Old Testament prophets, and often in the New Testament.

What do we see in the devotion of a wife to her husband? Or of the husband to his wife?

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1860 paragraph 111 91 Lectures III. & IV.Spiritual Delusion- No. 1 -- On Leaving One's First Love- No. 2 -- (This 2-part sermon was listed in the Table of Contents of the "Oberlin Evangelist" as "Spiritual Declension") ...

Or you may study the devotion of the father and the mother to their child. They live their life over in the little one. How many are living and toiling all their lives to get something for their children.

2. The essential element of this love to Christ is voluntary. It implies voluntary consecration, giving one's self up to the promotion of the highest good of the person loved. This good-will carries with it the affections. Such is the relation of the will to the sensibility that when the will is fixed, the sensibilities are borne along in harmony with it.

Voluntary love is in this respect entirely different from natural affection. In voluntary good-willing, the will acts first, takes the lead, and carries the sensibility after it. The affections and sensibilities do not lead the will, but follow it.

3. But in natural affection, this order is reversed. The natural impulses go forward and take the lead. In the conjugal relation, the taste is gratified and leads on to the devotion of the will. Hence this devotion is not obedience to the law of God -- that is, it may exist without any thought of God's law. It is often controlled by the tastes and the sensibilities only.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1860 paragraph 120 91 Lectures III. & IV.Spiritual Delusion- No. 1 -- On Leaving One's First Love- No. 2 -- (This 2-part sermon was listed in the Table of Contents of the "Oberlin Evangelist" as "Spiritual Declension") ...

7. The Christian's love is in a yet higher sense spontaneous in his supreme devotion to God. The very thought of displeasing God makes him tremble. The very danger makes him turn pale.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1860 paragraph 123 91 Lectures III. & IV.Spiritual Delusion- No. 1 -- On Leaving One's First Love- No. 2 -- (This 2-part sermon was listed in the Table of Contents of the "Oberlin Evangelist" as "Spiritual Declension") ...

10. Look into any of the relations of life where true love exists, and there you find this devotion to the interests and well-being of the loved one. Neither wife or husband, if really loving deem any suitable service for the other a task, but rather do all they can with the utmost joy. The secret of this is that they neither of them seek their own good supremely, but each the other's good. If these things were done selfishly, it could be but a poor and sorry satisfaction. But done in love, no joy can be richer. The labors of love are always sweet. If you ask the Christian what gives him the greatest joy, he will answer -- To please God, to have the consciousness of having aimed supremely to please Him, and the divine testimony that our aims and efforts have come up in remembrance before God. Ask the living Christian what gives him the greatest sorrow? He answers, that I should grieve my Savior; that I should ever displease him.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1861 paragraph 163 149 Lecture III. Living To Please God ...

3. To thus live to please God is true benevolence to Him; it is to will His good, His highest happiness and well-being. This is the real idea of love to God. It is devotion to His good; or in other words, it is devotion to His gratification or pleasure; it is good-willing to God, willing His infinite happiness and satisfaction. It is aiming to satisfy all His wishes in regard to us; to meet and fulfill all His desires respecting us.

To please Him is to gratify His fatherly heart. To please Him we must meet His views respecting our obligation; we must meet His wishes, we must obey His will, must adjust ourselves to all that He wishes us to be and do.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1861 paragraph 445 436 Lecture VIII. The Kingdom of God In Consciousness ...

3. But it is the reign of Christ, the King, in the soul of man.

II. I notice the three particulars which are here said to constitute this kingdom of God, "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."

1. What is righteousness?

Answer:

(1.) Righteousness is moral uprightness. This is that love to God and man which the Bible requires. Righteousness does not belong strictly to muscular action, but to the state of the heart. And righteousness is really the spirit of the moral law existing and established in the heart. Christ promised that at a certain time he would "write his law upon the hearts of his people, and engrave it in their inward parts, and they should all know the Lord from the least of them unto the greatest of them." The spirit of this law, that which the law really requires in its meaning and intent, is supreme, perfect, disinterested love to God, and equal love to man.

It requires that God should be loved for his own sake, and supremely, because He is supremely and infinitely great and good; that man should be loved as we love ourselves; and that this love to God and man should be expressed in all appropriate ways in all the relations of life. This love, with all its appropriate expressions in the temper, and life, and spirit, is righteousness. It is a voluntary love; and therefore must reveal itself in uprightness of life in every relation in which we exist.

(2.) Righteousness is the opposite of unrighteousness. Unrighteousness is a withholding from God and man their due; a spirit of don't-care for God or man; that contemns the rights, and feelings, and authority of God, and the rights of our neighbor. It is a want of conformity to the moral law, a voluntary withholding of obedience to it. Righteousness is the opposite of this. It is love positively exercised, with all its positive fruits.

It is real active devotion to the whole mind of God, and also devotion to the interests and well being of man.

(3.) Righteousness is a state of mind in which there is a continual offering of self in a confiding love-service to God. God is served diligently and with all the powers, with respect to him and not for pay. It is a cheerful and willing service; not because we must, but from a supreme interest in him.

It always implies diligence, and industry, and study, to please God; it always implies the avoiding of everything that can displease him; and in short, it consists in the heart's being fully committed to do and suffer all the will of God, and that readily, and joyfully for his own sake.

(4.) Righteousness also involves sincere devotion to the interests of man; a willingness to deny self when by so doing we can promote the greater good of others, and that from real regard to our fellow-man as to a brother. It is in fact the spirit of universal brotherhood practically carried out.

This, then, is the righteousness which constitutes the great element or peculiarity of the kingdom of God in the soul.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1861 paragraph 447 436 Lecture VIII. The Kingdom of God In Consciousness ...

This love, it should be understood, must necessarily express itself in the life, because the connection between this love and outward action is a connection of necessity. This love consists in the will's devotion to God and to the good of man. It is consecration; it is making common cause with God and man, and unifying ourselves with God's state of mind.

2. The second element of the kingdom of God in the soul of man is said to be "peace."
 

(1.) Peace of mind is not apathy; a state of indifference to God, his claims, or service. Peace is the opposite of war, or strife, or friction, under the government of God. I say, it is the opposite of this; it is a state of cordiality, and of conscious cordiality, existing between the soul and God.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1861 paragraph 833 803 Lectures XIV. & XV.Holding The Truth in Unrighteousness- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

What is sanctification but full obedience to God? And can you make God believe that you are a sincere Christian, while you are careless about rendering to him, in all things, a full obedience?

5. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all whose religion is of the negative rather than of the positive kind.

The law of God is positive. It requires supreme love to God and equal love to man. It requires action toward God and man, intense action, energetic devotion to God and man. Now there are many who seem to suppose that this is the doing nothing bad, as they say.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1862 paragraph 23 9 Lectures I. & II.Great Peace- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

Complacency of the will is in itself moral rightness. It is the will cordially and intensely unifying itself with the law of right. It seems to me that people often misconceive what choice really is, and think of it as a mere dry decision, involving no fervor, no cordiality, nothing but a cold dry decision. Whereas the complacency of the will or choice is a deep preference. It involves an earnest cordiality, and intense embracing, a warm, ardent sympathizing with that which is right; for these words -- embracing, cordiality, sympathy, may be applied to the will as well as to the sensibility or to the intellect.

5. To love the law of God in the sense of this text, involves confidence in the Law-Giver, and sympathy with his views, aim, and state of mind. It is the union of our will with God's will, as expressed in his law, and requirements. It involves the devotion to God, which the law requires. It is nothing else indeed, but that love of God and man, which the law in its spirit requires. It is that state of mind which truly prays, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." It is a state which accepts and conforms itself to the whole will of God, so far as that is known. It does this by a most cordial yielding and embracing; with a cordiality that really implies true enjoyment in doing and suffering the whole will of God.

III. The next enquiry is: What is the peace here spoken of?

1. It is not apathy of the soul -- is not a state of listlessness -- a lack of all interest in God or in divine things. Sometimes apathy that results from a seared conscience, is mistaken for peace.

 

 


THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST 1862 paragraph 86 63 Lectures II. & III.Moral Depravity- No.'s 1 & 2 ...

12. Moral depravity is the state of mind called in the Scriptures--the wicked heart. It is that in us to which moral character belongs. I speak of it as a state of mind, to distinguish it from mere volitions, or mere executive acts of mind. It is that state of mind from which wicked words, and acts naturally proceed. Words and acts are means to an end. They proceed from a choice of an end, and have moral character only as they partake of the moral qualities of the choice that gives them existence.

Moral depravity must consist in a settled ultimate choice, the choice of an end. It must consist in the voluntary devotion of the mind to self--self-interest and self-gratification. Human activity is rational and responsible. Men are moral agents--that is, they act under the responsibilities of moral obligation, are subjects of moral law and of moral government. Moral law requires of all moral agents sincere, perfect, universal devotion to God and to the interests of his kingdom. In other words, it requires perfect, universal, perpetual, unselfish benevolence.

 

 


HEART OF THE TRUTH - ON THEOLOGY, LECTURE 28 - FOURTH COMMANDMENT paragraph 104 FOURTH COMMANDMENT. When the Sabbath was instituted; Its design; Its necessity; Its perpetual and universal obligation; The manner of its observance; Its change from the seventh to the first day of the week.

6. It implies the spending of that day in devotional exercises, public, private, and social, as opportunity affords, and health allows.

 

 


HEART OF THE TRUTH - ON THEOLOGY, LECTURE 28 - FOURTH COMMANDMENT paragraph 107 FOURTH COMMANDMENT. When the Sabbath was instituted; Its design; Its necessity; Its perpetual and universal obligation; The manner of its observance; Its change from the seventh to the first day of the week.

9. Those persons whose weekly labors are bodily, should let their bodies rest and employ their minds in devotional exercises, and in the acquisition of religious knowledge on the Sabbath.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 1 - REGENERATION. paragraph 26

(3.) I remark, again, in other words, that regeneration consists in a change in the ultimate intention, or end of life. The mind, in regeneration, withdraws itself from seeking, as the ultimate disposition and end, the gratification of self, and choose a higher end than itself. Its disposition is changed from supreme selfishness to an entire devotion of the whole being to the great end for which God lives, and for which he made man to live. Regeneration, then, consists in ceasing to live to sin and for selfishness, and to live to and for God. I shall remark no further on this part of the subject at present, but proceed, thirdly, to notice--

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 1 - REGENERATION. paragraph 29

(2.) But again: new views of truth, and of religion are implied as resulting from it. For example, when individuals have withdrawn from devotion to themselves and selfish objects, and have devoted themselves to God, they naturally become different people. Before, they viewed everything in a selfish light, and so they acquired a liking for nothing but that which, according to their own views, furthered their selfish ends. They cared not for God even, only so far as they thought he might be useful to them. All their views were selfish. If they feared God at all, it was only because they feared being made miserable by him. Or, if they obeyed him, such obedience was the result of some selfish principle--they hoped to gain some selfish gratification by it. All their views were purely selfish views. Every unregenerate man looks at all things in a selfish light, and all that he imagines will promote his interests, he seeks and loves. But, when a man is born again, he has withdrawn himself from seeking his own interests as the supreme good: he has consecrated himself to God; and, as a necessary result of this, he will sympathise with everything which is calculated to promote the interests of Jehovah's kingdom. The change which has taken place in his mind causes him to have new views and feelings concerning his relation to God, and he now strives to promote God's glory, and extend his kingdom, by making known his will. Before, selfish interests ruled his conduct--self-gratification was his law--and nothing but self interested him. But now, he has come into an entirely different state of mind--he has devoted himself to another end--and he looks upon all things from a different point of view, and their value becomes differently estimated. Now, what constitutes the particular difference between an unregenerated and a regenerated man? There is no change in his physical structure either of body or mind. So far as substance is concerned, there is no change: but the attitude of his mind is entirely and radically changed. Now this change of mind will manifest itself in his life; for the will controls the action of the body. If I will to move my arms they must move, unless there is some opposing force stronger than my will. A change in the will necessarily produces a change in the life.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 5 - THE SPIRITUAL CLAIMS OF LONDON. paragraph 22

     IV. Notice some of the conditions by which the true spirit of this injunction may be complied with. 1. Confidence in the presence, and in the ready and effectual co-operation of Christ. What do you suppose Christ intended by saying, "Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world?" For what purpose did Christ make this promise if he did not mean, Lo! I am with you for the effectual helping of you to do what I have commanded you? Now, I suppose when Christ said these words, "Lo! I am with you always even to the end of the world," he would have us to understand this, which is the spirit of the promise: do this work, and mind, you shall not be straitened in me; you shall receive all the help you need from me. I will be with you in this thing; my heart is with you, my power is with you, my presence is with you, and my sympathies are all with you, always and everywhere. Is not this the meaning? What else can be meant by these words? Now, I suppose no Christian will deny that this is the meaning of the words, and the very meaning that Christ intended to convey to us. Now, if so, we must believe it. Everything that Christ has said is to be received in faith; in order that it may be effectual, it must be received in faith; therefore, I observe as the first condition upon which the Church can ever secure the conversion of the world, or individuals can convert those around them, we must believe that Christ is with us. Now, it is generally admitted, that Christ is in some sense with his Church; but he is only with his Church so far as he is there personally with the individuals who compose that Church, in their efforts to secure, and do what he requires of them. We are to believe this, have confidence in the fact that he is present to help us by his spirit, always present with us, and ready to sympathise, and co-operate with us for the securing of the great end which we are commanded to accomplish. 2. Once more: I regard this as a fundamental condition of success; a realising reliance on, and appropriation of this truth by the Church of Christ. Where this is not realised and appropriated, I believe there is little power to convert men from their sins. 3. Again: Another condition of success is that we thoroughly believe that in Christ's strength we are able to go up and take possession of the land. There must be the conviction and the realisation of the fact, by the Church, that she is able to do what Christ has commanded her to do: that Christians are able to accomplish the end at which he has told them to aim. This truth stands out blazing on the pages of inspiration that the Church is able to convert the world, and that he shall ultimately possess the land. 4. Another condition of success in this great enterprise, is the devotion of the whole Church to this work. This enterprise cannot be accomplished by a few of the members of the Church, while the rest of them stand right in the way. Every indolent member is a hindrance in the way of good being done. That individual who is not engaged in the work stands right in the way, and will often undo as much as the others can effect; therefore the body of the Church, the whole membership of the Church, must come up to this work. If, now, the entire body of the Church of this City of London were to come up to this work, and engage in it with ardour, take hold of it in faith, believing that in Christ's strength they are able to possess the land, what a vast revival of religion would you witness in this city. 5. Once more, a thorough realisation of individual responsibility in this work is indispensable to success. A vast multitude of professors of religion feel but little personal responsibility. But if the masses of the people are ever to be converted, the entire membership of the Church must become alive to this fact, that they are individually accountable for the conversion of their fellow-creatures. Every one will see, if he reflects upon it, that this must be a condition of success on a large scale. Now, if you ask me what I suppose to be the greatest difficulty in the way of success, in the extension of religion, in any locality, I would reply, the unbelief and want of right spirit and agency on the part of professors in that locality. They are not in a state in which they can realise their own responsibility; and they have not confidence in the Gospel. Now, while this is the case with them, they are hindering, instead of advancing, the Gospel, in their midst. 6. Another indispensable condition of success is this, there must be sympathy with Christ in love to souls. Those who would undertake this work must enter into Christ's sympathies, feel as he felt and feels for sinners, pity them as he pities them, blame them as he blames them; take God's part against them as he does, and yet stand in such a relation as to sympathise both with God and man; addressing themselves to the work as Christ and the Apostles addressed themselves to the work. It is a very remarkable fact that those Christians in every age of the Church who have entered into sympathy both with God and man, have been those whose efforts have told most upon the world. The Lord Jesus Christ is a beautiful, perfect, specimen of this; he sympathised most intensely with the holiness of God, and yet he felt most tenderly for the distressed and guilty condition of fallen man. He was full of zeal for the purity of the Divine government; he was always ready to sacrifice his life, as he did sacrifice it, to honour the law; still he was full of compassion, kindness, and love, to all classes and conditions of men, whatever might be their forlorn and suffering condition. He stood between God and man, and sympathised, not with the sins of men, but with the infirmities and sufferings of their nature--all that in an any way affected their well-being. He stood in such a relation as to be an example to us; he sympathised both with God and man. The primitive Church caught the same spirit, for although his personal intercourse with them had ceased, he continued to be with them through the agency of his Spirit; and thus they possessed the same idea, and practised the same course of conduct. They came into habits of deep sympathy with God in their love for souls. They counted not their lives dear unto them, if by any means they might save souls; and the spoiling of their goods in this enterprise, they took joyfully, counting themselves honoured in having to suffer for his name and cause. They laid themselves without reserve on the altar, and this was the secret of their success. Now, beloved brethren, the conditions of success are the same now as then. If there is to be many converted, there must be a spirit of fervent prayer, and a large development of this sympathy of which I have been speaking, in the souls of Christ's ministers, the same as in the days of the Apostles. If you ask me, What is the reason of the want of success now? I say, the great reason is, because the spirit with which Christ and the Apostles began this work is not developed in the Church, and in individual members of the Church, to such an extent as to move the world--this is the reason of the difficulty. It is not that the Gospel is different. The Gospel is just the same now as it was in the days when the Apostles preached it; it will have just the same power in our hands that it had in the hands of the Apostles. Some persons speak as if they supposed that in the mouths of uninspired men the Gospel could not be expected to produce such great effects as when the Apostles preached it. But why, pray? What has inspiration to do with it? Inspiration revealed the Gospel; taught men to write what they have recorded; which record we have, and the same spirit which indited it, to explain it. Wherein, then, are we deficient? Depend upon it, friends, if we have the same spirit of love and confidence, with the same sympathy which they had both with God and man, the Gospel will be as powerful in our hands as it was in the hands of the Apostles. Since I have been a Christian myself, I have seen many hundreds of instances in which wonderful success in winning souls to Christ has attended those who have had the qualifications of which I have been speaking--sympathy with God and man. But I cannot now enter into these details or even mention these instances, in one lecture. I should like to deliver a course of lectures to this Society, instead of one, that I might direct your attention to these things. 7. Again: another condition of the success of the Churches in any given locality, is this--they must enter into sympathy with Christ, in respect to his spirit of self-sacrifice for the promotion of this work. The spirit of the Gospel is essentially a spirit of self-denial; and rely upon it, when this spirit is developed in the Church she will succeed in making great progress in this work. In order to great success there must be the same willingness to lay everything upon the altar, that was manifested by Christ, his Apostles, and the Primitive Church. Jesus laid everything upon the altar, in order to save men; and we must count nothing dear to us that can be given up for the promotion of this great object. 8. Another indispensable condition to success is the entire consecration of the ministry to this work. The ministers of Christ bear a very important relation to this work, but they are not required to accomplish it all themselves. They are like the officers in an army; instead of attempting to do all the fighting themselves, they direct the energies of others. Ministers are the officers in Christ's great army, who are fighting against sin, and seeking to win dominion for their Master: they take an important and leading part in the work, but by no means are they to be expected to do all the fighting themselves, any more than officers are in any army in the world. 9. I said there must be entire consecration to this work; and let me add further, that unless they manifest a true spirit of consecration, they will be stumbling-blocks to the rest of the Church. It is indispensable that they should show themselves to be men given up to this work, absolutely,--men possessing the true spirit of self-sacrifice, sympathising with God and man; and that they are on the altar in this matter. Without this, the masses in any locality will never be moved, and the minister will be a hindrance in the way of good being done. I do not know what may be the condition of the ministry here in London, and therefore I speak not personally, but I speak a general truth when I say, that if Christians do not see that their ministers are heart and soul in this work, that they are ready to sacrifice anything to promote it, they are, and must be, stumbling-blocks in the way of good being done. In order to be greatly useful, these men, whom God has placed in such a position, must let everybody see that they are heart and soul in this work, that they have laid their all upon the altar, that they count not their comfort, their reputation, their salary, nor even their lives dear unto themselves in comparison to moving the masses of mankind and bringing them to God. 10. Another indispensable condition of success is this: Lay men and women must cease to lay down one rule for their minister and another for themselves. They must conduct themselves by the same rule, and be upon the altar, too, in their respective spheres of labour. Instead of criticising their ministers, and finding fault with them, they must work under his direction and assistance. If the membership of the Church just suppose that they can put their responsibility upon the ministers, they are entirely mistaken. Suppose that the ministers come into the pulpits Sunday after Sunday, and labour, and toil, and weep, and pray, and the sinners sit and listen to the solemn and awful truths which come from the preacher's lips, and feel that they are solemn and awful realities; but suppose in the same place there is a multitude of careless professors of religion who show by their conduct that they don't believe what has been preached, what stumbling-blocks are they in the way of the conversion of these sinners, who would otherwise, in all probability, be converted! By their conduct they seem to say, "We don't believe in the truth of what our minister says in the pulpit--it is all very well for Sunday, and he is paid to believe and teach these things, but we don't concern ourselves about them." How many times, when ministers have poured out all their heart before a congregation, have sinners been roused, and felt their hearts start up in fear, and their hair to stand on end, in consequence of what they have heard; they are deeply impressed. The congregation begins to move out, the professors of religion laugh and shake hands with each other, and going home they converse upon indifferent subjects, just as if they had not been hearing of those great and eternal realities; and seem to say by all their words, actions, and looks, "Don't you be alarmed, you see we are not at all alarmed, and we have heard more about these things than ever you did; these things may be very well for the Sabbath, and fit for the pulpit, but there is no truth in them." No wonder that sinners are unconverted! The membership of the Churches must be made to feel their individual responsibility, they must come into sympathy with Christ, and with the minister so far as he sympathises with Christ, and labour with him for the conversion of souls. Let them understand that they must cease to apply one rule to the minister, another to themselves; let them feel their individual responsibility, and come right out and consecrate themselves for the work, and lay their all upon God; and then we shall see a great revival of true religion in our midst. 11. Another indispensable condition of success is, that our religion must begin at home, with our children and those immediately under our influence; and then we must seek the conversion of those whom, next to these, we can most readily reach and influence. When individuals are themselves converted, let them next secure the conversion of their children and those around them; and if they did this, they would create around them a little green and refreshing spot like that around the Siloam well, and its delightful soul-cheering and holy influence would soon be felt on every side. Let it be understood that persons must begin at home, and with those immediately around them, and then the influence must necessarily extend further. This must not only be felt to be true of ministers, but of everybody professing godliness. Let them each lay hold on their next friend, and bring him to Christ. 12. Another condition of success is this. The Church, and every individual member of the Church, must realise the guilt and danger of sinners. Let them look at it, and dwell upon it as they ought, and not turn their minds away from it. I have often thought that the reason why there is so little distress in the Church with respect to the state of sinners is, that Christians do not like to consider their real guilt and danger. They do not stir up their minds to a consideration of the real state of their children and their neighbours around them. Now, let me say, if persons are ever to be stirred up to take hold upon this subject, they must think upon it; and if they are ever to come into sympathy with God and man, they must attend to this subject; the mind must dwell upon it. 13. Once more: another condition of success is this--the members of the Church must cease to operate so much by proxy as they now do. The fact is, there is a very great and fatal tendency in Christians to do this, the great business of their lives, by proxy. They hire a minister, and pay a pound or two towards the support of a missionary, or a colporteur, and fancy that they have done the whole of their duty. Now, it is true that much good is to be done by ministers, missionaries, colporteurs, district visitors, and others in their several departments, but the Church membership must be wholly engaged if there is to be a large measure of success. The personal exertion of every Christian is needful and imperative; personal influence, personal conversation, prayer, and intelligent warning must be a condition of success in this great enterprise. I have never known this species of effort to be employed in any locality without an immediate and glorious result. I do not believe, in the history of the world, that the membership of any Church, in any part of the world, have engaged in this work in a right spirit, and from proper motives, without the success being such as to astonish themselves, it has been so far above all that they had expected. I say that every individual should be personally engaged in making known the Gospel, but I do not mean that they can give up their entire time to this work, but I do mean to say that very much more time might be employed by professors in this work than is at present, and immense good might result from it. 14. Another condition of success is: the Church must cease to neglect her duty, and then charge the failure upon the sovereignty of God. Some people talk as if want of success was to be ascribed to some mysterious sovereignty of God. It will do for us to talk of the sovereignty of God when we have done our duty, but not before. Why, what would you think of a man who should neglect to sow his field, and then, because at the time of harvest he had no crop, should ascribe it to the sovereignty of God? Or what would you think of a man who so shamefully neglected his business as to become a bankrupt, and then charge it to the sovereignty of God? Why, you would see the absurdity and wickedness of it at once. If the farmer tills and sows his land properly and wisely, and then God should send a blight upon it, so be it; but until he has done his duty in the spirit of dependence upon God, let him cease to talk, as if the want of a crop was the result of some mysterious sovereignty of God. So with Christians, they must cease to neglect their duty before they talk of the sovereignty of God hindering the conversion of sinners. 15. Again: professors of religion must cease to suppose that they do their duty, when they do not live in the true spirit of the Gospel. For example, suppose a minister should go into the pulpit from ambitious motives, that his chief desire should be to secure a great name for himself; and suppose this minister should say when he got home, "Well, I have preached so many times to-day, and I have done my duty." He preaches with a cold and unbelieving heart, and with little or no sympathy with Christ, little of no faith in the efficacy of the Gospel; and then can go home and say, "Well, whatever the result, I have done my duty;" and thus the want of success which is sure to follow such preaching, is thrown carelessly and wickedly upon God. "I have done my duty." No! You have not done your duty, even if you have preached the Gospel in all its truth, unless you have done it from a right motive, and in the spirit of the Gospel. If there are ministers present, let me say, that I am not affirming that you do any of these things, and preach the Gospel from wrong and impure motives, for I know you not; but I would call your attention to this, my brethren, for neither you nor I preach the Gospel in the spirit in which we ought to preach it, although we may preach the truth, and nothing but the truth, if we do not preach it in the spirit, and with the faith that Christ requires. Suppose our hearers should come to meeting and hear the Gospel, but not obey it, not believe it, and should then go home and say, "Well, we have been to meeting, and so we have done our duty." Nay! they have tempted God, instead of doing their duty. Let us, then, cease to talk about religion or duty, unless we come to our duty with right motives, and perform it in a right spirit. When we have done this, we may cast the results upon God, assured that Christ will complete the work which we have thus begun--for he says, "Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 16. Another condition of success is this: the Church must come out from the world and show herself, and let it be known that God has a people in the world. Let there be a visible and plain distinction, that people may see that they are actuated by a different spirit, and living for a different end: they must appear to be what God says they are, "a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people, zealous of good works." This is to be plainly seen as an indispensable condition of eminent success. 17. The stumbling-blocks, which have been produced by a worldly spirit, must be taken out of the way. If we have manifested an unkind, or unjust, or unchristian spirit, in our families, in our neighbourhoods, or in our business relations; anything that caused men to stumble; led them to doubt our Christianity, or gave them reason to doubt whether there was any truth in religion at all,--I say we must take these stumbling-blocks up, we must take them out of the way; we must confess our sins and forsake them, and show, by our constant anxiety for the souls of our children and our neighbours, that we have faith in our religion, and desire them to participate in its blessings. As an illustration, let me mention a fact which occurred in America. An elder of a Presbyterian Church, one of the most respectable men of the town where he lived, and was thought by his neighbours to be a very religious man, as he attended to the forms of religion very regularly; but still there was a deal of formality about him, and but little of the powerful life-giving energy of religion. This man had a large family of sons and daughters at the time of which I am speaking, men and women grown, and yet none of them were converted. One day he was walking alone, a little way from his house, when he became very seriously impressed with the thought that his family were not converted, and questioned himself as to the reason; and he was forcibly struck with the conviction that he had never entered into the subject with them in such a manner as that they should be able to realise their guilt and danger; and as he continued to reflect upon this, such was his agony that he trembled fearfully, and the perspiration rolled down his face. He started off for his house, and before he could get there he fairly ran. When he reached the house he inquired in a very excited voice for one and another of his children; hearing the tones and manner in which their father was speaking, the family were soon assembled to learn what could be the matter. When they were all come together, the father fell upon his knees, and made confession to them and to God, and prayed for their souls. It so affected the whole family that in a very short time they were all converted. Now, I could tell you of multitudes of cases similar to this, where individuals have come to see that they have not done their duty, but have resolved to do it, and obtained a blessed result. 18. Again: if the Church will succeed in this matter, she must be willing to be searched and reproved; and the language of every member must be, "Search me, O search me, and try my heart, and see what evil there is in me; and lead me in the way that is everlasting." They must be intensely desirous to know what is essential to this great work, and to be made fit for its accomplishment. There must be deep self-examination, and a determination to do whatever is necessary to be done. 19. The Church must cease to grieve the Holy Spirit by her selfishness and self- indulgence. The fact is, persons are often complaining that they want the Spirit, while they are grieving the Spirit by their self-indulgent practices. While in this state it is naturally impossible for them to have the Spirit dwelling in their hearts. Many individuals grieve the Holy Spirit, and yet they are not conscious of it. They live in a great many forms of self-indulgence, and complain of the absence of the Spirit, and yet do not know wherein they are in fault. Are not ministers often very guilty in this respect? My design is not to reprove ministers where reproof is not needed; but I must be faithful. Oh, brethren, take care not to grieve the Holy Spirit! Watch your thoughts, and be careful of all your actions, and separate yourselves from worldly men and worldly influences as much as you can, in order that you may the more effectually help forward the work of God. 20. The spirit of caste must be got rid of. By the spirit of caste I mean the spirit that seems to overlook the fact that men are brethren. From the very nature of things, I know there will be different stations in society, and which probably will always exist to a greater or less extent; and those which are proper I do not condemn; but there is an improper feeling and spirit too much prevalent among many in the higher walks of life, which prevents their doing good to those below them in station. I have been astonished sometimes to see the aversion of many professors of religion to descend to the lower class of society to do them good. Now, you know that this was not the case with Jesus Christ, whose constant aim it was to benefit and bless the poor; and he even went to this class for the men whom he chose for his apostles, to carry the Gospel to the world. I cannot enlarge upon this now; but you all know that in every locality there is a spirit of caste that misrepresents the Christian religion, and does an immense injury to the great mass of the lower classes in consequence. Christians, while they should faithfully rebuke their vices and reprove them for their sins, should also deeply sympathise with them in their poverty, and pity their distresses; and this is the way to win their hearts and lead them to the Saviour. The most flimsy infidelity takes possession of their minds, just in proportion to the seeming sympathy of the infidel teachers with their wants and necessities. They know how to appreciate such kindness; and the fact is, there is a great want of deep and intense sympathy on the part of the Christian Church with the masses of the poorer classes. Let this state of things be altered; let them get the impression, let it be once understood, that Christians are living to do them good in every way, and they will prefer Christianity to infidelity. It is not meant that Christians, in showing their sympathy should take such a part as to connive at their intemperance or sin in any form; but let the Christian seek to win them from vice, and persuade them to give up their intemperance in every form and degree; seek their welfare, temporal and spiritual, and a blessed result will follow. I have been astonished many times to see what a want of this spirit is to be found in different localities; and, in consequence, the mass of mankind are carried away with the most flimsy and absurd infidelity, because Christians fail to take any deep sympathy and interest in them. Now, if you are parents, let your families see that you earnestly desire their conversion to God. If you are a master, and have many persons under your influence, let them see that you have an earnest desire for their good, that you are vastly more desirous of securing their soul's salvation than their services in your business. The power of such conduct will be very great; it will move them--there is no mistake about it. But I must pass rapidly over these thoughts. 21. The Churches must be willing to be searched, and must help to search each other. Several years since, the students of one of my theological classes came to me for advice, as to the best plan they could adopt to assist each other in the best possible way to prepare for the ministry. I advised them to have a weekly meeting to search each other, to open their hearts to each other; and, furthermore, to privately tell each other their faults, and in the most fraternal manner try to reform everything that was wrong in their hearts, spirit, habits, and manners; in all and everything to make the most holy self-denial; and to unite in prayer for each other. They did this in several classes, and just in proportion as they have been faithful to each other, have I had the satisfaction of seeing them become prosperous and godly men, scattered about over our great country, with hearts full of love and faith, prosecuting the great work to which Christ has called them. Those classes that did most for each other in the way which I have named, have succeeded best, since they entered the ministry, in winning souls to Christ. Thus, I say, the Churches of Christ must be willing to be searched, they must search each other by all possible fidelity, kindness, and brotherly love. 22. Once more, all parties must realise their true responsibility. Every individual must remember that he is to be a missionary. We speak of missionaries as if they were men only who were sent to preach the Gospel to the heathen, or were connected with some Society for spreading the Gospel at home, forgetting often that every Christian is a missionary, or ought to be. 23. A high standard of piety is an indispensable condition to success in this work: there will never be any very great success in this city, or in any other locality, if the standard of piety be not greatly elevated in the Churches. In those localities that I have known, where great revivals of religion have taken place, the standard of piety has been raised higher and higher from time to time. Some person speak of revivals as if they were mere temporary excitements; that after revivals there has been declension, which has left the standard of religion lower than it was before the revival took place. Now, so far as my experience goes, I never knew such a state of things as that; if it was really a revival of religion, and Christians have got the standard of piety elevated in their own hearts, they will get a new development of spiritual life, from the brightness of which they may afterwards decline; but they will never go back so far as they were before. I have known persons pass through another and another revival; but at every succeeding revival they have had a higher development of spiritual life within them. Now, I stand not here to charge you with being hypocrites or backsliders, but I say, if you are to move the masses, and be the means of numerous conversions, you must have a higher standard of piety, a higher development of spiritual life. This must be! I will take your present standard at any given point, and say, from that point, whatever it may be, your piety must be greatly elevated; and just in that proportion will you be able to reach and influence those around you. If there are any ministers who sustain such a position before their people as not move their hearts, let me tell them that they never will move them, until they themselves have a higher development of spiritual life. Visitors, tract distributors, and all other labourers in this work, let me tell you--and you will, of course, not be offended with me when I tell you--that there must be a more thorough development of Christ in you; it must manifest itself in your looks, manners, and voice, that every man with whom you meet may be satisfied that you are sincere. A man by only looking at you can tell whether you are in earnest. The tone of your voice will often reveal the state of your heart. A man might go through the streets of the city calling, Fire! fire! in such tones that nobody would believe him. Now, you must speak about religion in such tones that people will believe you, or you will fail to make any impression. If you speak about religion in such a way as to lead men to suppose that you don't yourself believe what you are saying, it is impossible for you to get persons to believe what you say. You must be so much in earnest that your earnestness cannot be concealed. Whitfield used to stand in this pulpit, and let me ask what was the secret of his power? His earnestness. Everybody knew that he was in earnest. All men felt, they could not but feel, that he was in solemn earnest, and so they listened and were saved. Let the Church awake up from sleep, and show herself to be in earnest, and when she has done this, if she fails, then talk of the sovereignty of God, and not before.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 8 - WHY LONDON IS NOT CONVERTED. paragraph 19

Now, if Christians live without a true idea of what real religion is, what impression can the world get of the religion of Jesus Christ? The impression made upon the world will be, that the religion of Jesus is, in itself, essentially the same as it is manifested by his professed followers. What other idea can the world get? Now, do you suppose that, if Jesus had lived to promote his own personal comfort and to please himself, anybody would have got the impression that he was living for the salvation of men--that his great aim was to bring them to God? Would this have been the impression made upon his immediate disciples, and would the effect of this have been developed in their minds and manifested in their actions. But, the fact is, the great idea that stood boldly and prominently out in the minds of his disciples and apostles was, that he did not live to himself, but solely and entirely for the promotion of the object which he came on earth to accomplish. He laid himself upon the altar most unreservedly, and his immediate disciples did the same, and the spirit of self-sacrifice was communicated to all around them; and the work of conversion went forward gloriously; wave after wave of salvation flowed over every land; and, in consequence, in a comparatively few years, they had accomplished wonderful things; and if they had possessed our facilities--our Printing Press, our Electric Wires, our Steam Power, and a thousand things that we possess--with their faith, with their energy, and with their devotion, they would in a few years have converted the world to God. But the Church has failed to do this; the Church has not even made the people understand what the religion of Christ is. If the apostles had had our facilities, do you suppose that they would have failed to make the people understand in what the religion of their Lord and Master consisted? Do you suppose that they would not have possessed the land long ago? But somehow or the other, the Church has really failed to secure this object. What is the cause of this? Why has the Church failed to accomplish her great and only mission upon earth? Has the promise run out which says, "Lo! I am with you alway even unto the end of the world?" Has the Church lost her hold upon Christ, or has the promise of Christ expired? Brethren, which is it?

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 8 - WHY LONDON IS NOT CONVERTED. paragraph 25

Just take the following cases as an illustration, which occurred in one of the cities of America. Some individuals were in the habit of attending what are called Conference Meetings, where Christians met together to pray and exhort each other. An unconverted man, but who was anxious about his soul, frequently attended these religious meetings. One evening he was outside, and heard them talking of the danger in which souls were placed, and saying that unless there was more prayer and more devotion on the part of Christians, these sinners would die in their sins and would go to Hell; and when he could bear it no longer, he burst into the room where these christians were sitting, and, with tears streaming from his eyes, said, "Christians, what do you mean? You tell us that our souls are in danger of being lost for ever, that you have power to prevail with God, and that unless you wake up and do your duty, you have no reason to believe that there will ever be a revival of religion, or that these souls, now in a perishing condition, will be saved. Now, what can you mean? You have met here time after time, and yet things remain as before. Now, either you don't believe what you say, or you don't care if we go to Hell." And with tears he implored them, if they believed what they said, to wake up and do their duty, and save the souls of the perishing.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 9 - GREAT CITIES - WHAT HINDERS THEIR CONVERSION? paragraph 13

Let me say, then, that all sin may be said to resolve itself into this--a spirit of devotion to self. It is generally believed, I suppose, that our first parents, when they sinned, fell into a state of total alienation from God. What was the particular thing they did? They withdrew their devotion from God, in order to gratify themselves, in spite of His authority. He told them they might eat of every tree in the garden, save one. He designed to throw a restraint upon them, for the sake of subduing their wills--developing and strengthening their virtue; but then they withdrew their allegiance from God, and set up to be gods themselves! The tempter said, "Ah! though God said, Of every tree of the garden mayest thou eat, except of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; thou mayest eat even of that, and in the day in which thou dost eat thereof thou shalt NOT surely die, but ye shall be as gods, knowing good from evil!" Of this, when Eve saw it, she partook. What constituted the great evil of this? It was not only disobedience to God's expressed commands, but it was sinning simply for the sake of their own personal gratification. Instead of seeking the honor, and obeying the commands of the Almighty, they withdrew themselves from God, and devoted themselves to the promotion of their own interests, in despite of God. Now, this is the sin of all mankind, for they withhold their allegiance from God, and devote themselves to themselves. "Selfishness" is a word which may express the will of sin, if properly understood. It matters not at all which of the propensities overrules the rest, and leads the mind into bondage. Sin consists in man's giving himself up to himself--to his own gratification, and seeking his own pleasure and profit. This develops itself in a great variety of ways. In one man, one propensity entices the will to seek its particular gratification; in another, another. This gratification of the various propensities--this devotion of the will and of the being to pleasing self in some way or other-is the great evil of the world. Now, whatever makes strong and powerful appeals to these propensities, are obstacles to be overcome. The thing to be done, is to withdraw man from himself, and to bring him to God. Our first parents set up to be gods for themselves. Now, if they had come back, and consecrated themselves to God, yielding up their whole being to obey Him, and seeking His interest and His glory--to have done this, would have been to have returned to God. There must be begun in us that devotion to God which constitutes piety. We must forsake ourselves; for virtue, or holiness, resolves itself into a unit as much as sin does, and the mind devoted to self, is a mind totally depraved; while the mind devoted to God--seeking his glory, and yielding itself up to be influenced by Him--this is a pious mind. Now, to induce men to cease altogether to live to and for themselves, and to live to God, is to restore them to a position in which they can be happy. A great many persons seem to talk, as if in this, and in all great cities, the people were very peculiar. Now, the peculiarity is not with the people, but it is with the circumstances which make the selfishness, which takes one development in one place, and another in another. The fact is, great cities are the very hot--beds of those influences which make such strong appeals to these propensities, yielding the mind up to which, constitute sin. The appetite for food or drink, when inordinate, is not a constitutional appetite, but the will seeking gratification; whereas the Almighty forbids us to give ourselves up to obey and seek the gratification of these propensities, instead of subordinating every one of them to the will and glory of God.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 14 - MOCKING GOD. paragraph 13

II. Some of the ways in which persons mock God. And here let me say, in the outset, that if there be anything of vital importance to us, it is that we really understand what is our true position in respect to God; whether we are or are not accepted of him in the service which we profess to render unto him. I must pass rapidly over these thoughts; and, therefore, I cannot do more than make suggestions, which I beg you will think over and enlarge upon for yourselves. 1. I remark, in the first place, that we mock God when we present ourselves in the house of God as his professed servants, without the true spirit of obedience, love, worship, and faith. Unless we are really in an obedient state of mind, in the true spirit of devotion to his service, we mock him by the very fact of coming to his house as worshippers. For example, what do we profess in coming before him as worshippers? It is very important that we should understand what is really implied in coming to God's house, and taking our places before him, as worshippers of God. Why, in coming to God's house you profess to be devoted to his interests, service, and glory, that in your hearts you are really the servants of God, and that you come to his house to express what is in your hearts. You profess by this act to have an obedient spirit, love unfeigned, full confidence in him, submission to him, and the spirit of true worship. Now, every one who goes to the house of God without these sentiments of humility, love, and obedience, is a mocker, in the Bible sense of the term; and you are sternly asked, "Who hath required this at your hands, that you should tread my courts without the spirit of true worshippers--the spirit of truth, real obedience, love, faith, repentance, devotion, consecration to me? Why have you come before me as mere mockers, drawing near to me with your lips, while your heart is far from me?" Now, everyone that comes to the house of God as a worshipper professes, by the very act, that he possesses the spirit of devotion to God, the spirit of consecration to his service and glory. 2. Again, it must imply in us two things, either that we already profess to be devoted to him, or that we come to inquire how we may consecrate ourselves to him and obey him. The language of the real Christian is, let us go up to the house of God and inquire what the will of the Lord is, that we may understand his will, and that we may do it. By the very act of coming to inquire his will, they pledge themselves to obey it when it is made known to them. If this is not the case, what can it mean? For what purpose do you visit God's house? Let me ask you that are professors of religion, for what end do you come to God's house, if it is not to learn his will that you might obey him, and do more to glorify him? If this is not the disposition of your minds, if this is not what you mean, then you are mockers, and you appear before God in the character of hypocrites, virtually saying, "O God, we don't come to obey thee, we don't come to inquire thy will concerning us, with the intention of doing it: we only come pretending this, for in our hearts we have no desire to obey thy will, and do what thou requirest of us." Suppose that there are some of this class of person in this house now. No one can deny that we are met professedly to worship God, and the very fact of coming to such a meeting is surely a declaration that you wish to be instructed in the will of the Lord, that you may obey him and glorify his name. Now, is not this true? Why, yes it is! This is a meeting for God's worship, for God to reveal his will to his people in order that they may do it. Now, the very fact that you are come together, must imply that you have pledged yourselves, that when the will of the Lord is made known, you will do it. The very fact that we come to God's house must imply that we come to worship God, that we appear before him as obedient people, with a determination in our hearts to do whatever he may tell us to do. Now, let me ask, is not anything short of complying with the spirit of this pledge, mocking God? Would you not regard yourselves as mocked if you were served in the same way by your fellow-creatures?--if an individual should profess great attachment to you, and after all have no such feeling in his heart? Let it be understood, then, that all assemblies meeting for the worship of God, who are really not in a state of heart to do whatever he commands them, are mockers. Just so far as they are not in a right state of heart they mock God, and all who come to such places and do not honestly intend to apply the truth, and obey it themselves when they return into the world, why they mock God. The very fact of their appearing before him implies that they mean to obey him. If they do not, they are mockers. Hear what the Lord said by the mouth of the prophet, "They speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come I pray you and hear what is the word that cometh from the Lord, and they come unto thee as my people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words but they will not do them: for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their conversation. And lo! thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on a instrument: for they hear thy words but they do them not." They wanted to make him believe that they designed to obey him, and came out and sat before the prophet as the people of God, and heard his words with attention, and professed to love and admire them, but would not do them.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 14 - MOCKING GOD. paragraph 15

Now, from all this you can judge whether you are guilty of mocking God, whether you are hypocritical. As a matter of course, you mock God if you confess sin and do not forsake and resist it, as we have seen. What are your views of sin in general? Do you confess sin in your closets? Confess the sins of the day when you are about to retire for the night? If so, why do you do it? Do you intend to repent of your sins, or do you expect to continue to live just as you have lived? Do you confess your sins because you think it is safe as a matter of form? Now, all such confessions of sin as do not come from the heart, from a penitent heart resolved upon forsaking sin, are not only senseless, they are worse than senseless, much worse--they are downright mocking of God. 6. But again: All mere formality in prayer, asking for things from mere custom. Some persons in their closets, if they are in the habit of closet prayer, will pray for things without thinking what they say. They pray according to custom, they go round about in a circle, always asking for much the same things without really considering what they say, or hardly knowing what they do say. They get into the habit of going a certain round, saying certain things from week to week and year to year. They have family worship, or an imitation of it. They keep up the custom, because they have a duty to perform, as they think: it won't do to neglect their prayers, as they call them. They never fail to have these so-called family devotions, but they pray without faith, without deep feeling, and without anything that should characterize prayer. It is all a mere matter of form. Instead of coming from the depths of the heart, why it is mere talk and form. Now, of course, such conduct as this amounts only to mockery--persons who act thus, instead of praying to God, shamefully mock him. There is such formality in family worship, that every member of the household can tell almost exactly what is going to be prayed for. Sometimes this same thing is seen in the public assembly also. Now, all such things as these are merely mocking of God. 7. Again, let me say, all matters of form, and stereotyped ways of doing things in public worship, that are done as things of course, because they are accustomed to be done: the want of sincerity, and the general state of mind implied in all this, is mocking God. For example, congregations are in the habit of doing certain things in a certain order. Sing! read! pray! sing! preach! sing! dismiss! Now, this is all very well if these things are done in the spirit of them; but suppose a congregation get into such a state that they do not enter into the spirit of the service, they mock God by the performance! For example, the minister reads the hymn and the people begin to sing; they are affected by the sound of the music, and in consequence think themselves very religious. It is a very common thing for individuals to suppose that they are very devotional, because they have some sort of emotional feelings when some plaintive hymn is being sung. For many years before I was converted, I led the music in a public assembly. I could shed tears in singing oftimes; and so deep were my emotions frequently, that I used to take a self-righteous satisfaction in such feelings; but I was an impenitent sinner and a mocker of God. This is no uncommon thing. Some people who have been living in sin all day, and, having no purpose of amendment, can sit down and sing God's praises. Without being in a state of devotion, and never having given their hearts to God at all, they will sing such lines as these--

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 14 - MOCKING GOD. paragraph 26

A few remarks must close what I have to say. Stereotyped forms tend to divert the mind from a true idea of religion. I have found that all forms of worship must, from the very nature of the case, tend to make men formalists, and blind their minds to a true idea of the spirituality of religion. For example, what true idea of prayer has the man who reads his prayer from a book? What is prayer? Why, it is the language of the heart, coming to God for the supply of its wants; like a little child coming to its parents for something that it wishes for. The child comes to its parent and asks, because it feels that it wants, and knows where it can get what it wants. Now, suppose a child, when it wanted a piece of bread, should read a prayer to its parent, without the word bread being mentioned in it; or if it was mentioned at the end, he must go right through the whole of the prayer before he got to it, and thus get his petition before his parent. Prayer is the language of the heart addressed to God. The language of those who feel that they are in need of something which God can bestow. Now, suppose prayer should be regarded in any other light; the man begin to use a form of words which he calls prayer, because he thinks it is his duty, why he loses the true idea of prayer altogether. This is how persons often lose all true idea of religion and spiritual worship. Thus it was with the Jewish nation--they lost the true idea of religion in the multitude of their forms and ceremonies. Again, I remark, that without great care we are all liable to fall into the sin of insincerity. Be perfectly upright with God in your closet. I have been long satisfied that much of the backsliding we are called to witness, is caused by insincerity in private devotion. If any man is not honest with God in private, neither will he be honest in public, and thus his mind and soul will become ruined and alienated from God. It is but right and proper that every time we meet together for public worship, the minister should offer public prayer to God, but it never need be insincere prayer, for if the minister lives near to God, as he ought, he will always find enough to say. Yes, more than he could utter if he were to talk from morning till night. And if he does not walk with God, it were much better to say nothing at all, and not insult and grieve the Spirit of God by using language that is not dictated by the heart. Once more, from what has been said, you see how it is that some leaders in religious services become so excessively hardened. I have known some of this class in the midst of a revival so cold and callous that the truth never served to touch them at all. Now, there is nothing that will so soon blast and destroy the spirituality and prosperity of a Church, as men of this sort being leaders and chief men in the Church. The Lord deliver us from such. Again, persons should beware of anything like formality in their family worship. I know that some people think forms are better than nothing in a family, but I don't believe it. I am confident that nothing tends so much to ruin a family. It will make the children despise religion, and become hardened to its influence.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 14 - MOCKING GOD. paragraph 27

My beloved brethren, how is it with you, you that profess to be Christians? Are you honest with God; does he know that you are? Do you confess that sometimes you are not, and do you ask what you shall do when you do not feel in the spirit of prayer? Why, begin right there, and tell God that you have not the spirit of prayer. There is something true; some place where you can begin. Is it that you don't feel right? Then tell God that. Are you not in the spirit of prayer? Tell him that! If you want the Holy Spirit, tell him that! If you have sinned, confess that! Be honest, and make no pretense whatever. Let sincerity be the habit of your life, and you will always have something to say to God; your love, faith, and devotion will be strengthened, and your soul blessed. If you are honest with God, you will always find him honest with you! Some years ago I was acquainted with a young man who had been studying for the ministry; this young man, soon after he had completed his college course, became the subject of a very strong conviction that much of his religious profession had been nothing but a mockery. One night he retired to rest, and after having put out the light and laid down in the bed, he was very much surprised to see the room re-lighted; he sat up in the bed and looked to see whence the light came; he perceived a person in the room looking very earnestly at him, standing at the foot of the bed; in a few moments the whole light of the room concentrated itself into a single eye, and that eye was fixed intensely upon him. He trembled violently, and was in a state of dreadful agony: the eye continued to glare upon him, looking him through and through, searching his very thoughts. He never forgot this searching; it so completely subdued him, that he came to be one of the most holy men and devoted ministers I ever knew. One of the deacons wrote to me a short time ago, and said, "Mr. Hopkins is gone to heaven; we want some one to supply his place, but we cannot expect another Mr. Hopkins." Now, he became what he was, because the Spirit searched him and revealed his heart to himself. Oh, for the Spirit to search every one of us! Let him begin with me! Brethren, pray that my heart may be searched; that the hearts of all your ministers may be searched; that your own hearts may be searched. Pray that God may search us all, that we may be mercifully kept from mocking God, lest our bands be made strong.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 22 - THE CHRISTIAN'S RULE OF LIFE. paragraph 18

But let me say again: The same rule we see shines most beautifully in the primitive saints and martyrs. And the same rule is applicable to all ministers, lay men and women, and every person in every rank of life now; the disposition of all Christian persons should be to commend God's government and character to the world--in all things to set forth the religion of Jesus Christ, the religion of the Bible, and so to exhibit it before the world, that men seeing their good works shall be constrained to glorify God. Christ has said, "Ye are the light of the world:" "Ye are the salt of the earth." "So let your light shine before men that they seeing your good works shall glorify your Father which is in heaven." You profess to be the subjects of God's government, the disciples of Jesus; then in all your conduct, manifest his spirit, let your light shine so as to cause God to be glorified; and do not misrepresent religion, do not falsify the character of God and the benevolence of His government. The apostle said, "For me to live is Christ." Do you live so as to be able to say this? Let your object be in living among men to seek to image forth Christ in all your conduct; to represent Christ among men as if there were a new edition of Jesus living in you; as if Christ was again appearing among men; showing himself through your temper, and spirit, and your whole life. But let me say again: Let it be understood, then, that this rule is one of universal application. It is binding on all Christian men in all places and at all times. You are to glorify God in the week as well as on the Sabbath; in your business as well as in your prayers. If you fail to glorify God in your business transactions, you will dishonor Him in your prayers; if you appear at the communion table, at the prayer meeting, at the service of the sanctuary,--everything you do at any or all of these places is dishonorable to Christ, if in your daily life, in your dealings with worldly men, you are doing nothing to honor Christ! I say that on all the days of the week as well as on the Sabbath, you are to honor God--in your business as much as in your prayers; and in your ordinary meals, you ought as truly to honor God as at the Lord's table. To be sure, the Lord's Supper is to commemorate the Lord's death, but whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, you are to do all to the glory of God. You are to show that you are not "a man given to appetite," in such sense that you live to eat instead of eat to live, in order that you may do the work of God. But I cannot enlarge upon this principle which you see so clearly brought out in the text. The meaning of all this is, that all our lives should be devotional, that we should ever, by our lives, and in all our ways, be devoted to God--everything that we do is to be service rendered to God. Now, suppose, that you are living by this rule, that you really intend to live to God, of course you will seek to glorify Him in your eating and drinking, you will not eat food merely to gratify your own appetite, but that you may have strength to glorify God. Of course it will be so as to the things you eat, and the quantity you eat. Of course, you will not make "provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof;" but your appetite will be subservient to God--you will have His glory in view, and not merely your own personal gratification, in eating and drinking. So in everything else, you will show to the world that you have a higher end in view than merely your own personal gratification, and that you are living to honor and glorify God.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 22 - THE CHRISTIAN'S RULE OF LIFE. paragraph 32

But let me say again: This is one of the most simple and natural rules of life for men whose hearts are right with God. When the heart is in a right state, it is as natural as to breathe, to have reference to Christ in everything that you do. Again: If men would regard this rule, their business transactions would not be a snare to them. Business was not designed to be a snare to any man; and if men will but transact business for God, they will be as religious in their business as they are on the Sabbath. Observe, you may be as truly spiritual-minded behind your counters as in your closets. Spiritual-mindedness is devoting everything to God, making everything over to Him, and living for His honor and glory. Now men ought to be just as spiritual-minded in their business as in their prayers; and if they are not in their business, they are not in their prayers. Mind that! If you are not devoted to God during the week, you are not on the Sabbath, and you deceive yourself if you think you are. You cannot serve yourself in the week and God on the Sabbath. Not you! The fact is, you will have the same end in view on the Sabbath as in the week. If you are selfish in the week, you will be selfish on the Sabbath. If you are not religious in your business, you will not be religious in anything. This is the fact. For what end are you doing business? What object have you in view? What do you live for? This is the great question. It should always be understood, then, that men are in reality no more religious on the Sabbath than they are in the week. They are not more truly religious, in their prayers than they are in their workshops. If they are religious in the one, they are in the other. Let no man think that he honors God on the Sabbath if he does not serve God on the other days of the week. It is well to be in the sanctuary on the Sabbath, and on all proper occasions; this duty should not be left undone, and let your devotion to God's house be seen and acknowledged; but be sure to let the world see in your business that you are a servant of God; let this be known in all your ways, in all your expenditure, in all your dress, in all your equipage; you must be the servant of God in every little thing, or be the servant of God in nothing.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 30 - REFUGES OF LIES. paragraph 7

I shall not have time to notice a great many of the present prevailing forms of error and sin, but I will advert to a few that are very common amongst men. The first thing that I notice, as a false refuge in which many indulge, is a selfish religion. And here let me say--I am sorry to be able to say it--that the longer I live, and the more acquaintance I have with men in general, and especially with professing Christians, the more am I afflicted with this conviction, that multitudes are perfectly mistaken with regard to the nature of religion--with great multitudes it is only a form of selfishness. A whole sermon might be occupied on this subject, but I must make only a very few remarks upon it. Let me say, selfishness in any form is in exact opposition to religion. It makes no difference as to the type which selfishness puts on. The question is, does a man make his own interest the object of pursuit? If so, such conduct is the exact opposite of that benevolence which Christ manifested, when he laid himself out for the good of mankind and the glory of God. He lived not to please himself, but to please God. And the Apostle says, "look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." Indeed, everywhere, both in the law and the gospel, religion--true religion, is presented to us as disinterested benevolence. By disinterested benevolence of course I do not mean a want of interest in the great subject of salvation itself; but I mean that we should be religious not from any selfish motives or reasons, but that we should love God for what God is, and that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves. Supreme devotion to God; to God's interest as supreme, and to his nature as a God of holiness. Where there is true religion it will manifest itself, in prayer, praise, and obedience. It will manifest itself with respect to God in efforts to please him, to honour him, and to glorify him, and an earnest desire to secure the love, confidence and obedience of all men. Now this must be naturally so. With respect to man, true religion will manifest itself, in simplicity of character, in seeking the good of all men, in caring for them as we care for ourselves; in caring for their interests as we care for our own interests; in caring for their salvation as we care for our own salvation; rejoicing in their prosperity as we would in our own, sympathizing with their afflictions, as if they were our own--in a word, there will be a setting ourselves with a single eye to promote the interests of mankind and the glory of God. Now this is the natural result of faith in Christ. All selfishness is sin. But mark! it is not selfishness for a man to have a proper regard for his own salvation; but it is for him to regard his own salvation only and care not for the salvation of his neighbour. Suppose a man cares ever so much about his own salvation, but cares not for the salvation of his neighbour, this is supreme selfishness right on the face of it; and the more intensely anxious a man is about his own soul, if he cares nothing about the salvation of his neighbour, the more intensely selfish he is. This should always be understood. Men that are very regular at the means of grace, and who make their own salvation a matter of deep concern, but who after all care little or nothing for the salvation of others, are deceiving themselves--trusting in a false refuge. Why it is perfectly plain in such cases that their religion is mere selfishness. For let me ask, where does the Bible allow men to make any separate, selfish interest their great object of pursuit? The teaching of Christ is, "thou shalt love they neighbour as thyself," and Christ himself acted upon this principle, and the apostles did so too; instead of making their own enjoyment, happiness, or salvation the great end of pursuit, they laid themselves out for the good of the world. And further, this is the true way for a man to secure his own salvation; by caring for the salvation of others. "Whosoever will save his life," said Christ, "shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Now it should always be remembered therefore, that all religion which terminates upon ourselves, or upon our friends, whom we regard as parts of ourselves, is a religion of supreme selfishness, and not the religion of the Bible--but the exact opposite. Now a great many persons fall into this mistake. They think that persons may be selfish in religion and be real Christians. They know that when men are worldly, engrossed with the world, why of course, that is not religion, but most admit that. But when individuals are found at the meeting, and found at the ordinance, especially, and are found saying their prayers, for themselves, and those who are parts of themselves,--they are thought to be very pious! But this is a grand mistake; for after all they have not escaped the narrow circle of their own selfishness. Selfishness has changed its type, to be sure; it was once worldly, directed to some worldly object, glory, wealth, character, or something else; but some circumstance led them to change their course, and now they have begun to care about religion, but they are just as selfish now as when they were in the world--the form of selfishness is changed, but the principle is not removed. Before, they speculated out of men; and now they attempt to speculate out of God! They set themselves, before, to make something out of men; and now they set themselves to make something out of God! Instead of having come into sympathy with the benevolence of God; instead of having laid themselves on the altar, they are as selfish as ever. They are as selfish in seeking to secure their own salvation as they would be to secure a worldly estate. The end they have in view is a selfish end. I will tell you how it may be known, right on the face of it, whether a man, professing to be religious, is a selfish man. When he was engaged in worldly matters, his object was entirely self: how much he could make for himself--all his bargains and tradings were to this end. If he cared about a man's bankruptcy, it was for some selfish reason; in the hope that he would be able to make something out of it. Look at a selfish man in trade, he cares only for his own business; he does not "look also on the things of others," according to the apostle's injunction: while trying to please himself, and to benefit himself. Now he becomes what is called a religious man: well, look at him now, is he any more really benevolent in his religion than he was in his business? Does he give any indications of his selfishness having been given up? Suppose he observed the business relations of society: why it was his interest to do so, he had a good reason for it. Look at the man when he has become a religious man, after he has been introduced to the church of God, if you please; and what proofs does he exhibit that he had undergone a radical change? Does he care for his own salvation? Is he labouring for the salvation of others? Is he anxious for others? Does he pray for others, care for others, rejoice with others? Does he mourn over the desolations of Zion? Has he come into full sympathy with Christ? Does he feel a deep concern for the souls that are around him? Does he care nothing for worldly things, only so far as they may be made the instruments of saving the souls of men? Does he pray for grace that he may be useful; that he may be able to save souls, pulling them out of the fire, and is he engaged in building up the true church of God? Now you can easily see if you have fled to a refuge of lies in this respect. Have you felt awakenings of soul when you have heard or read of the awful things that God has said about the wicked? Has his hand come near you, and stricken down a companion, a friend, a neighbour, and has your heart awakened from your dream of worldly mindedness? Have you been led to see that life is short and death is near, and that a solemn judgment is to follow? Have you understood the value of religion? and further, have you so studied its nature as to see that the starting point is a firm resolution in regard to the great end of your life? That to begin, you must renounce self, and live for God: if not, you are self-sufficient still, and know nothing about religion at all. Suppose that you are selfish in religious matters instead of worldly matters, what are you the better? There is no real difference, which you will see if you think of it. Selfishness has put on a new type, but the man is not new, and therefore you are none the better. Selfishness may often change its type. It puts on one form in the child, another in youth, and another in manhood. It is manifested in ambition, the love of fame, the love of character, the love of power, and so on. I might chase these things down from one stage to another, and selfishness would everywhere unfold itself. In almost every man's history we should find that at some period of his life it puts on a religious type, sometimes in youth, and sometimes in riper age. Observe, that against which I would warn you is this--making such a mistake as to suppose that religion at all consists in mere attention to religious things, but from selfish motives, always terminating at last upon self.

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 32 - A PUBLIC PROFESSION OF CHRIST. paragraph 12

Again: it is a public surrender to Christ, or submission to him. It is a public avowal of submission and consecration to him in the relations he sustains to men. It is, I say, a public act of submission, and a surrendering of everything up to him as the only Saviour of the world. Again: it is a public avowal of sympathy with him in the great work in which he is engaged, that of bringing about the salvation of men. Again, it implies a public renunciation of self and the spirit of self-seeking. A public profession of self-denial, in this sense, that we no longer live for ourselves; it is a profession therefore of universal devotion to God. But again: it also implies dependence on him in all the relations in which he is exhibited. Further: it implies a confession of sin that we cannot be saved by our own righteousness, not even begin to be saved. It is a public profession of the impossibility of being saved on the ground of law, and therefore a public declaration of the fact that Christ is the only possible way in which a man can be saved. All profession then is designed to be a public avowal of confidence in the truths of the gospel, of submission to Christ, and of dependence on his authority. Again: it is a public renunciation of the spirit of the world!

 

 


FROM THE PENNY PULPIT, SERMON 38 - LITTLE SINS. paragraph 20

In the next place; the moral law, or the law of God, requires supreme love to God, and equal love to man. The whole of the law is summed up in these two requirements -- love to God and love to man. And this love must not be a mere emotion: the whole being must be devoted to the end to which God is devote: it must be a voluntary devotion to God because of the end which he seeks. In other words -- it is good-will within; it is the mind in a voluntary state yielding itself up, not to self-interest, but the glory of God, and the good of all beings.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 5 - Foundation of Moral Obligation paragraph 90 What is intended by the foundation of moral obligation . . The extent of moral obligation . . Remind you of the distinction between the ground and conditions of obligation . . Points of agreement among the principal parties in this discussion . . Wherein they disagree . . That the sovereign will of God is not the foundation of moral obligation . . The theory of Paley . . The utilitarian philosophy

     (1.) That if self-interest be the ground of moral obligation, then self-interest is the end to be chosen for its own sake. To be virtuous I must in every instance intend my own interest as the supreme good. Then, according to this theory, disinterested benevolence is sin. To live to God, and the universe, is not right. It is not devotion to the right end. This theory affirms self-interest to be the end for which we ought to live. Then selfishness is virtue, and benevolence is vice. These are directly opposite theories. It cannot be a trifle to embrace the wrong view of this subject. If Dr. Paley was right, all are fundamentally wrong who hold the benevolence theory.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 7 - Foundation of Moral Obligation. False Theories. II paragraph 26 The theory that the goodness or moral excellence of God is the foundation of moral obligation

     It is agreed, that the moral law requires love; and that this term expresses all that it requires. It is also agreed that this love is good-will, or that it resolves itself into choice, or ultimate intention. It must, then, consist in the choice of an ultimate end. Or, in more common language, this love consists in the supreme devotion of heart and soul, to God and to the highest good of being. But since virtue either consists in choice, or is an attribute of choice, or benevolence, it is impossible to will it as an ultimate end. For this would involve the absurdity of choosing choice, or intending intention, as an end, instead of choosing that as an end upon which virtuous choice terminates. Or, if virtue be regarded as the moral attribute of love or benevolence, to make it an ultimate end would be to make an attribute of choice an ultimate end, instead of that on which choice terminates, or ought to terminate. This is absurd.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 14 - Moral Government paragraph 134 What constitutes obedience to moral law . . Obedience cannot be partial in the sense that the subject ever does or can partly obey and partly disobey at the same time . . Can the will at the same time make opposite choices? . . The choice of an ultimate end is, and must be, the supreme preference of the mind . . An intelligent choice must respect ends or means . . No choice whatever can be made inconsistent with the present choice of an ultimate end . . Inquiry respecting the strength or intensity of the choice . . The law does not require the constant and most intense action of the will . . An intention cannot be right and honest in kind, and deficient in the degree of intensity . . Examination of the philosophy of the question, whether sin and holiness consist in supreme, ultimate, and opposite choices or intentions . . Objections to the foregoing philosophy considered . . This philosophy examined in the light of the scriptures

     5. The common philosophy, that maintains the co-existence of both sin and holiness in the mind, at the same time, is virtually Antinomianism. It is a rejection of the law of God as the standard of duty. It maintains, that something is holiness which is less than supreme disinterested benevolence, or the devotion, for the time, of the whole being to God. Now any philosophy that makes regeneration, or holiness, consist in any thing less than just that measure of obedience which the law of God requires, is Antinomianism. It is a letting down, a rejection of the law of God.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 16 - Moral Government--Continued (Part III) paragraph 78 What constitutes obedience to moral law . . Just rules of legal interpretation . . That actual knowledge is indispensable to moral obligation shown from scripture . . In the light of the above rules, inquire what is not implied in entire obedience to the law of God

     25. Nor is it inconsistent with our living in human society--with mingling in the scenes, and engaging in the affairs of this world, as some have supposed. Hence the absurd and ridiculous notions of papists in retiring to monasteries, and convents--in taking the veil, and, as they say, retiring to a life of devotion. Now I suppose this state of voluntary exclusion from human society, to be utterly inconsistent with any degree of holiness, and a manifest violation of the law of love to our neighbour.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 45 - Regeneration--Continued (Part IV) paragraph 18 Wherein saints and sinners or deceived professors must differ

     Now the thing after which we are inquiring is, what must be the necessary developements and manifestations of these opposite states of mind. These opposite states are supreme and opposite and ultimate choices; and those opposite choices are ultimate. In whatever the saint and the sinner respectively engage, they have directly opposite ends in view. They are states of supreme devotion to ultimate and opposite ends. In whatever they do, the saint, if he acts as a saint, and the sinner, if he acts as a sinner, have directly opposite ends in view. They do, or omit what they do, for entirely different and opposite ultimate reasons. Although, as we have seen, in many things their opposite ends may lead them to attempt to secure them by similar means, and may, therefore, often lead to the same outward life, in many respects, yet it is always true, that even when they act outwardly alike, they have inwardly entirely different ultimate reasons for their conduct. As it often happens, that the saint in pursuing the highest good of being in general as an end, finds it necessary to do many things which the sinner may do to secure his selfish end; and as it often happens, that the sinner, in his endeavours to compass his selfish end, finds it necessary to use the same outward means that the saint does in his efforts to secure his end, it requires not unfrequently a good degree of candour and of discrimination to distinguish between them. And, as saints and sinners possess the same, or similar, constitutions and constitutional propensities, their desires and feelings are often so much alike, as to embarrass the superficial inquirer after their true spiritual state. As has been said, the sinner often, in seasons of strong religious excitement, not only has desires and feelings resulting from the laws of his constitution, similar to those that are experienced by the saints, but he also, for the time being, gives up his will to follow these impulses. In this case it requires the nicest discrimination to distinguish between the saint and the sinner; for at such times they not only feel alike, but they also act alike. The difficulty, in such cases, is to distinguish between the action of a will that obeys the intelligence and one that obeys a class of feelings that are so nearly in harmony with the dictates of the intelligence. To distinguish, in such cases, between that which proceeds from feeling, and that which proceeds from the intelligence, requires no slight degree of attention and discrimination. One needs to be a close observer, and no tyro in mental philosophy, to make just discriminations in cases of this kind.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 53 - The Notion of Inability. paragraph 14 Proper mode of accounting for it

     3. A consciousness of the force of habit, in respect to all the acts and states of body and mind, has contributed to the loose holding of the doctrine of inability. Every one who is at all in the habit of observation and self-reflection is aware, that for some reason we acquire a greater and greater facility in doing anything by practice or repetition. We find this to be true in respect to acts of will as really as in respect to the involuntary states of mind. When the will has been long committed to the indulgence of the propensities, and in the habit of submitting itself to their impulses, there is a real difficulty of some sort in the way of changing its action. This difficulty cannot really impair the liberty of the will. If it could, it would destroy, or so far impair, moral agency and accountability. But habit may, and, as every one knows, does interpose an obstacle of some sort in the way of right willing, or, on the other hand, in the way of wrong willing. That is, men both obey and disobey with greatest facility from habit. Habit strongly favours the accustomed action of the will in any direction. This, as I said, never does or can properly impair the freedom of the will, or render it impossible to act in a contrary direction; for if it could and should, the actions of the will, in that case, being determined by a law of necessity in one direction, would have no moral character. If benevolence became a habit so strong that it were utterly impossible to will in an opposite direction, or not to will benevolently, benevolence would cease to be virtuous. So, on the other hand, with selfishness. If the will came to be determined in that direction by habit grown into a law of necessity, such action would and must cease to have moral character. But, as I said, there is a real conscious difficulty of some sort in the way of obedience, when the will has been long accustomed to sin. This is strongly recognized in the language of inspiration and in devotional hymns, as well as in the language of experience by all men. The language of scripture is often so strong upon this point, that, but for a regard to the subject-matter of discourse, we might justly infer a proper inability. For example, Jer. xiii. 23: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." This and similar passages recognize the influence of habit. "Then may ye who are accustomed to do evil:" custom or habit is to be overcome, and, in the strong language of the prophet, this is like changing the Ethiop's skin or the leopard's spots. But to understand the prophet as here affirming a proper inability were to disregard one of the fundamental rules of interpreting language, namely, that it is to be understood by reference to the subject of discourse. The latter part of the seventh chapter of Romans affords a striking instance and an illustration of this. It is, as has just been said, a sound and most important rule of interpreting all language, that due regard be had to the subject-matter of discourse. When "cannot," and such like terms, that express an inability are applied to physical or involuntary actions or states of mind, they express a proper natural inability; but when they are used in reference to actions of free will, they express not a proper impossibility, but only a difficulty arising out of the existence of a contrary choice, or the law of habit, or both. Much question has been made about the seventh of Romans in its relation to the subject of ability and inability. Let us, therefore, look a little into this passage, Romans vii. 15-23: "For that which I do, I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." Now, what did the Apostle mean by this language? Did he use language here in the popular sense, or with strictly philosophical propriety? He says he finds himself able to will, but not able to do. Is he then speaking of a mere outward or physical inability? Does he mean merely to say, that the established connexion between volition and its sequents was disturbed, so that he could not execute his volitions? This his language, literally interpreted, and without reference to the subject-matter of discourse, and without regard to the manifest scope and design of the writer, would lead us to conclude. But whoever contended for such an interpretation? The apostle used popular language, and was describing a very common experience. Convicted sinners and backslidden saints often make legal resolutions, and resolve upon obedience under the influence of legal motives, and without really becoming benevolent, and changing the attitude of their wills. They, under the influence of conviction, purpose selfishly to do their duty to God and man, and, in the presence of temptation, they constantly fail of keeping their resolutions. It is true, that with their selfish hearts, or in the selfish attitude of their wills, they cannot keep their resolutions to abstain from those inward thoughts and emotions, nor from those outward actions that result by a law of necessity from a selfish state or attitude of the will. These legal resolutions the apostle popularly calls willings. "To will is present with me, but how to do good I find not. When I would do good, evil is present with me, so that the good I would I do not, and the evil I would not that I do. If then I do the evil I would not, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I delight in the law of God after the inner man. But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members," &c. Now, this appears to me to be descriptive of a very familiar experience of every deeply convicted sinner or backslider. The will is committed to the propensities, to the law in the members, or to the gratification of the impulses of the sensibility. Hence, the outward life is selfish. Conviction of sin leads to the formation of resolutions of amendment, while the will does not submit to God. These resolutions constantly fail of securing the result contemplated. The will still abides in a state of committal to self-gratification; and hence resolutions to amend in feeling or the outward life, fail of securing those results.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 53 - The Notion of Inability. paragraph 18 Proper mode of accounting for it

     Much that is said of inability in poetry, and in the common language of the saints, respects not the subjection of the will to God, but those experiences, and states of feeling that depend on the illuminations of the Spirit just referred to. The language that is so common in prayer and in the devotional dialect of the church, respects generally our dependence upon the Holy Spirit for such divine discoveries of Christ, as to charm the soul into a steadfast abiding in him. We feel our dependence upon the Holy Spirit so to enlighten us, as to break up for ever the power of sinful habit, and draw us away from our idols entirely and for ever.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 54 - Repentance and Impenitence. paragraph 77 What repentance is not, and what it is . . What is implied in it . . What impenitence is not . . What it is . . Some things that are implied in it . . Some evidences of it

     15. A spirit of covetousness, or grasping after the world, is a sure indication of impenitence. "Covetousness is idolatry." It is a hungering and thirsting after, and devotion to this world. Acquisitiveness indulged must be positive proof of an impenitent state of mind. If any man love the world, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 54 - Repentance and Impenitence. paragraph 88 What repentance is not, and what it is . . What is implied in it . . What impenitence is not . . What it is . . Some things that are implied in it . . Some evidences of it

     5. It is also common to fall into the error of separating devotion from practical benevolence. Many seem to be striving after a devotion that is not piety. They are trying to work their sensibility into a state which they suppose to be devotion, while they retain selfishness in their hearts. They live in habitual self-indulgence, and yet observe seasons of what they call devotion. Devotion is with them mere emotion, a state of feeling, a phenomenon of the sensibility, a devotion without religion. This is a grievous delusion.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 58 - Sanctification (Part 2) paragraph 18 Remind you of some points that have been settled in this course of study . . Definition of the principal terms to be used in this discussion

     Sanctification is a term of frequent use in the Bible. Its simple and primary meaning is a state of consecration to God. To sanctify is to set apart to a holy use--to consecrate a thing to the service of God. This is plainly both the Old and the New Testament use of the term. The Greek word hagiazo means to sanctify, to consecrate, or devote a person or thing to a particular, especially to a sacred, use. This word is synonymous with the Hebrew kaudash. This last word is used in the Old Testament to express the same thing that is intended by the Greek hagiazo, namely, to consecrate, devote, set apart, sanctify, purify, make clean or pure. Hagiasmos, a substantive from hagiazo, means sanctification, devotion, consecration, purity, holiness.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 58 - Sanctification (Part 2) paragraph 20 Remind you of some points that have been settled in this course of study . . Definition of the principal terms to be used in this discussion

     1. That sanctification does not imply any constitutional change, either of soul or body. It consists in the consecration or devotion of the constitutional powers of body and soul to God, and not in any change wrought in the constitution itself.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 68 - Sanctification (Part 12) paragraph 145 Objections answered

     (3.) The consecration is designed to be entire, and everlasting; that is, the consecrated soul does not enlist as an experiment, nor for a limited time; but true consecration or devotion to God is comprehensive, so far as present intention goes, of all the future. This consecration to be real is comprehensive of all future duration, and of all space; that is, the soul in the act of true consecration, enlists in the service of God for life, to be wholly God's servant in all places, at all times, and to all eternity. These are the true elements of all acceptable consecration to God. The soul in the act of consecration makes no reserves of time, or place, or powers; all are surrendered to God. It does not intend nor expect to sin at the moment of consecration. It fully intends to be, and remain wholly the Lord's. It chooses the great end upon which benevolence fixes, and designs to relinquish it no more for ever. But experience teaches the Christian his own weakness, and that, if left to himself, he is easily overcome by temptation. His sensibility has been so little developed in its relations to eternal realities; his will has so long been in the habit of being led by the feelings and desires of the sensibility, that when the propensities are strongly excited, he finds to his confusion and unspeakable grief, that he is weak; and that if left to himself, he invariably yields to temptation; or that he is at least very liable to do so, and that he frequently sins. Now, the question is, Is there no ground of rational hope that he may attain such an established state as uniformly to have the victory over temptation? Is there no ground of rational hope in this respect, until after this life? Has grace made no such provision, as to render it rational in the true saints, to expect or hope to gain so complete a victory that Rom. v. 21, shall be realized in their own experience: "That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord;" Also, vi. 14: "For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law, but under grace." Also, Thess. v. 23, 24: "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole soul, &c., faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it." Also, Jeremiah xxxii. 40: "And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good, but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me." Also, Col. iv. 12: "That you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God." I say, the true question is, Is there no hope for the Christian, that these and such-like passages shall be fulfilled to him, and realized in his own experience in this life? Can he not rationally hope, that the developements of his sensibility may be so corrected, that he may be thoroughly and constantly enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and enjoy so constant and so deep an anointing, may be so baptized into Christ, and made so thoroughly acquainted with him, in his various offices and relations, as to break effectually and permanently the power of temptation; and so confirm the soul in its consecration as that, through the indwelling of Christ by his Spirit, he shall be more than conqueror in every conflict with the world, the flesh, and Satan? Is there no hope? This is the agonizing inquiry of every soul who has felt the galling and fascinating power of temptation. Observe, in the case supposed, the soul is at present willing, and deeply solicitous to avoid all sin in future. Thus far grace has prevailed; the soul has committed itself to God. Is there no hope that it can abide in this state of committal? Is it irrational for it, in the midst of its anxieties, to stand fast for ever; to hope that it shall ever in this life find itself practically able to do so? If not, what do the scriptures mean? If I may not rationally hope to stand in every hour of temptation, what can this passage mean? 1 Cor. x. 13: "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." Does this only mean, that we shall have the natural ability to bear temptation? Does it not mean, that such Divine help shall be vouchsafed, as that we may rationally hope and expect to stand in the hour of trial? Indeed it does.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), LECTURE 68 - Sanctification (Part 12) paragraph 148 Objections answered

     That the Holy Spirit, by enlightening the mind, often creates the most intense desires after God and universal and unalterable holiness, is a matter of common experience. It is a matter of common experience, that while those desires continue, the soul walks in unbroken consecration to, and communion with, God. It is when counter desires are awakened, and the feelings and emotions toward God and divine things are quenched and suppressed, that the will is seduced from its allegiance. Now there is, there can be, nothing in the philosophy of mind, to forbid the hope of attaining to such a state of developement of the sensibility, that it shall become, as it were, dead to every object that tends to draw the heart from God, and so alive to God as to respond instantly to truth and light, and as to be mellow and tender towards God and Christ and divine things, as the apple of the eye. When this is effected, it is perfectly philosophical to look for permanent consecration of will to God, in obedience not to the sensibility, but in obedience to the reason. The feelings are then such, that the reason demands their indulgence, and that the objects upon which they fasten shall be sought. The whole mind is then going forth in one direction. Observe, I do not say that it is impossible for the will to abide steadfast in opposition to the feelings, desires, and emotions; but I do say, and all experience proves, that until the sensibility is developed in its relations to God and divine realities, the steady and undeviating action of the will in its devotion to God cannot be depended upon. Now the great work of the Holy Spirit in the soul consists, at least very much, in so enlightening the mind, in respect to God and Christ and divine realities, as to render the soul dead to things of time and sense, and alive to God and eternal things; to crucify the old man; and to develope a new class of desires and emotions that will favour, instead of oppose, the right action of the will.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), APPENDIX Reply to "Princeton Biblical Repertory" paragraph 120

     "On this doctrine we remark: 1. That it is readily admitted that happiness is a good. 2. That it is consequently obligatory on all moral agents to endeavour to promote it. 3. That the highest happiness of the universe, being an unspeakably exalted and important end, to make its attainment the object of life is a noble principle of action. 4. Consequently, this theory of moral obligation is inconceivably more elevated than that which makes self-love the ultimate principle of action, and our own happiness the highest object of pursuit. 5. That the error of the theory is, in making enjoyment the highest and only intrinsic or real good. 6. That this error derives no countenance from the fact, that the Bible represents love to God and love to our neighbour, as the fulfilling of the law. To derive any argument from this source, Mr. Finney must first take the truth of his theory for granted. To prove that all love is benevolence, it must be assumed that happiness is the only good. If love is vastly more than benevolence, if a disposition to promote happiness is only one, and that one of the lowest forms of the comprehensive excellence which the scriptures call love, his argument is worth nothing. In accordance with that meaning of the term which universal usage has given it, any outgoing of the soul, whether under the form of desire, affection, complacency, reverence, delight towards an appropriate object, is in the Bible called love. To squeeze all this down, and wire-draw it through one pin-hole, is as impossible as to change the nature of the human soul. Every man, not a slave to some barren theory of the understanding, knows that love to God is not benevolence; that it is approbation, complacency, delight in his moral excellence, reverence, gratitude, devotion.

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), APPENDIX Reply to "Princeton Biblical Repertory" paragraph 212

     "On this doctrine we remark: 1. That it is readily admitted that happiness is a good. 2. That it is consequently obligatory on all moral agents to endeavour to promote it. 3. That the highest happiness of the universe, being an unspeakably exalted and important end, to make its attainment the object of life is a noble principle of action. 4. Consequently this theory of moral obligation is inconceivably more elevated than that which make self-love the ultimate principle of action, and our own happiness the highest object of pursuit. 5. That the error of the theory is making enjoyment the highest and the only intrinsic or real good. 6. That this error derives no countenance from the fact, that the Bible represents love to God and love to our neighbour as the fulfilling of the law. To derive any argument from this source, Mr. Finney must first take the truth of his theory for granted. To prove that all love is benevolence, it must be assumed that happiness is the only good. If love is vastly more than benevolence, if a disposition to promote happiness is only one, and that one of the lowest forms of that comprehensive excellence which the scriptures call love, his argument is worth nothing. In accordance with that meaning of the term, which universal usage has given it, any out-going of the soul, whether under the form of desire, affection, complacency, reverence, delight towards an appropriate object, is in the Bible called love. To squeeze all this down, and wire-draw it through one pin-hole, is as impossible as to change the nature of the human soul. Every man, not a slave to some barren theory of the understanding, knows that love to God is not benevolence; that it is approbation, complacency, delight in his moral excellence, reverence, gratitude, devotion. The reason then why the scriptures represent love as the fulfilling of the law, is two-fold. First, because love to an infinitely perfect Being, involves in it approbation of all conceivable forms of moral excellence, and consequent congeniality of soul with it under all those forms. He who really loves a God of truth, justice, purity, mercy, and benevolence, is himself truthful, just, holy, merciful, and kind. Secondly, because love to God and man will secure all obedience to the precepts of the law. We may admit therefore that love is the fulfilling of the law, without being sophisticated into believing, or rather saying, that faith is love, justice is love, patience love, humility love."

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), APPENDIX Reply to "Princeton Biblical Repertory" paragraph 220

     "To prove that all love is benevolence, it must be assumed that happiness is the only good. If love is vastly more than benevolence, if a disposition to promote happiness is only one, and that one of the lowest forms of that comprehensive excellence which the scriptures call love, his argument is worth nothing. In accordance with that meaning of the term, which universal usage has given it, any out-going of the soul, whether under the form of desire, affection, complacency, reverence, delight towards an appropriate object, is in the Bible called love. To squeeze all this down, and wire-draw it through one pin-hole, is as impossible as to change the nature of the human soul. Every man, not a slave to some barren theory of the understanding, knows that love to God is not benevolence; that it is approbation, complacency, delight in his moral excellence, reverence, gratitude, devotion. The reason then why the scriptures represent love as the fulfilling of the law, is two-fold. First, because love to an infinitely perfect Being, involves in it approbation of all conceivable forms of moral excellence, and consequent congeniality of soul with it under those forms. He who really loves a God of truth, justice, purity, mercy, benevolence, is himself truthful, just, holy, merciful, and kind. Secondly, because love to God and man will secure all obedience to the precepts of the law."

 

 


SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1851), APPENDIX Reply to "Princeton Biblical Repertory" paragraph 223

     Again: he represents reverence, gratitude, and devotion, as higher forms of virtue than benevolence. I had shown, that these were attributes of benevolence, but he regards them manifestly as involuntary emotions. Reverence for God, for, or on account of his benevolence, gratitude to God for his love or benevolence; devotion to God for his benevolence, higher forms of virtue than the benevolence which we adore! Amazing! What will the church and the world say, when they are told that at Princeton they hold such views of the nature of true religion? What, good will to God and to being in general, that efficient principle that is the foundation and the source of all doing good, one of the lowest forms of virtue! "Tell it not in Gath." I could enlarge indefinitely on the absurd, and most false and ruinous views of this writer, as it respects the nature of true religion. With his views, I do not wonder that he says, on page 276:--

 

 


POWER FROM ON HIGH - CHAPTER 6 - Prevailing Prayer paragraph 11

For example: In offering the Lord's Prayer, "Thy kingdom come," it is plain that sincerity is a condition of prevailing with God. But sincerity in offering this petition implies the whole heart and life devotion of the petitioner to the building up of this kingdom. It implies the sincere and thorough consecration of all that we have and all that we are to this end. To utter this petition in any other state of mind involves hypocrisy, and is an abomination.

 

 


POWER FROM ON HIGH - CHAPTER 6 - Prevailing Prayer paragraph 32

This rebuke fell heavily upon that prayer meeting, as I shall ever remember. It did them good; for it was not long before the members of that prayer meeting broke down, and we had a revival. I was present in the first meeting in which the revival spirit was manifest. Oh! how changed was the tone of their prayers, confessions, and supplications. I remarked, in returning home, to a friend: "What a change has come over these Christians. This must be the beginning of a revival." Yes; a wonderful change comes over all the meetings whenever the Christian people are revived. Then their confessions mean something. They mean reformation and restitution. They mean work. They mean the use of means. They mean the opening of their pockets, their hearts and hands, and the devotion of all their powers to the promotion of the work.

 

 


POWER FROM ON HIGH - CHAPTER 9 - Innocent Amusements paragraph 31

Just the thing here required is natural and inevitable to everyone that truly loves God and is truly devoted to the Savior. What is devotion to Jesus but a heart set upon rendering Him a loving obedience in all things? What is Christian liberty but the privilege of doing that which Christians most love to do that is, in all things to fulfill the good pleasure of their blessed Lord? Turn aside from saving souls to seek amusements! As if there could be a higher and diviner pleasure than is found in laboring for the salvation of souls. It cannot be. There can be no higher enjoyment found in this world than is found in pulling souls out of the fire and bringing them to Christ. I am filled with amazement when I read and hear the appeals to the Church to seek more worldly amusements. Do we need, can we have any fuller and higher satisfaction than is found in a close, serious, loving walk with God and cooperation with Him in fitting souls for heaven?

 

 


POWER FROM ON HIGH - CHAPTER 10 - How To Overcome Sin paragraph 7

The fact is that it is simply by faith that we receive the Spirit of Christ to work in us to will and to do, according to His good pleasure. He sheds abroad His own love in our hearts, and thereby enkindles ours. Every victory over sin is by faith in Christ; and whenever the mind is diverted from Christ, by resolving and fighting against sin, whether we are aware of it or not, we are acting in our own strength, rejecting the help of Christ, and are under a specious delusion. Nothing but the life and energy of the Spirit of Christ within us can save us from sin, and trust is the uniform and universal condition of the working of this saving energy within us. How long shall this fact be at least practically overlooked by the teachers of religion? How deeply rooted in the heart of man is self-righteousness and self-dependence? So deeply that one of the hardest lessons for the human heart to learn is to renounce self-dependence and trust wholly in Christ. When we open the door by implicit trust He enters in and takes up His abode with us and in us. By shedding abroad His love He quickens our whole souls into sympathy with Himself, and in this way, and in this way alone, He purifies our hearts through faith. He sustains our will in the attitude of devotion. He quickens and regulates our affections, desires, appetites and passions, and becomes our sanctification.

 

 


GOSPEL THEMES, SERMON 8 - The Wicked Heart Set to do Evil paragraph 16

Or suppose the case of a human government which offers rewards to offenders on condition of their returning to obedience. The real spirit of the offer goes the length of asking the sincere devotion of their hearts to the best good of the government. But they may take a wholly selfish view of the case, and determine to accept the proposal only just far enough to secure the rewards, and only for the sake of the rewards. The Ruler wants and expects the actual sympathy of their hearts -- their real good-will; and this being given, would love to reward them most abundantly; but how can He be satisfied with them if they are altogether selfish?

 

 


GOSPEL THEMES, SERMON 19 - Prayer and Labor For the Gathering of the Great Harvest paragraph 18

Hence, sincere prayer for Christ's cause implies that you are willing to do anything you can do to promote its interests, in the actual and absolute devotion of all your powers and resources for this object. You may not withhold even your own children. Nothing shall be too dear for you to offer on God's altar.

 

 


GOSPEL THEMES, SERMON 21 - Men Often Highly Esteem What God Abhors paragraph 11

God regards nothing as virtue except devotion to this end. The right end is not one's own, but the general good. Hence God's rule requires virtue, while man's rule at best only restrains vice. All human governments are founded on this principle, as all who study the subject know. They do not require benevolence, they only restrain selfishness. In the foundation principles of our government it is affirmed that men have certain inalienable rights, one of which is the right to pursue each his own happiness. This is affirmed to be an inalienable right, and is always assumed to be right in itself, provided it does not infringe on others' rights or happiness. But God's rule requires positive benevolence and regards nothing else as virtue except devotion to the highest good. Man's rule condemns nothing, provided man so restrains himself as not to infringe on others' rights.

 

 


GOSPEL THEMES, SERMON 21 - Men Often Highly Esteem What God Abhors paragraph 58

The good Christian in the world's esteem is never abrupt, never aggressive, yet he is greatly admired. He has a selfish devotion to pleasing men, than which nothing is more admired. I heard of a minister who had not an enemy in the world. He was said to be most like Christ among all the men they knew. I thought it strange that a man so like Christ should have no enemies, for Christ, more like Himself than any other man can be, had a great many enemies, and very bitter enemies too. Indeed, it is said, "If any man will live godly in Christ Jesus, he shall suffer persecution." But when I came to learn the facts of the case I understood the man. He never allowed himself to preach anything that could displease even Universalists. In fact, he had two Universalists in his Session. In the number of his Session were some Calvinists also, and he must by no means displease them. His preaching was indeed a model of its kind. His motto was -- Please the people -- nothing but please the people. In the midst of a revival, he would leave the meetings and go to a party; why? To please the people.

 

 


WAY OF SALVATION, SERMON 11 - The Doom of Those Who Neglect So Great Salvation paragraph 38

4. It is infinite folly to make the matter of personal salvation only a secondary matter; for to do so is only to neglect it after all. Unless it has your whole heart, you virtually neglect it, for nothing less than your whole heart is the devotion due. To give it less than your whole heart is truly to insult God, and to insult the subject of salvation.

 

 


WAY OF SALVATION, SERMON 19 - On Self Denial paragraph 36

8. To those of you who, being yet in your sins, cannot conceive how you can ever enjoy God, and cannot even imagine how your heart can cleave to God, and call Him a thousand endearing names, and pour out your heart in love to Jesus, let me beg of you to consider that there is such communion with God -- there is such joy of his presence, and you may have it at the price of self-denial and whole-hearted devotion to Jesus; not otherwise. And why should you not make this choice? Already you are saying, Every cup of worldly pleasure is blasted -- dried up and worthless. Then let them go. Bid them away, and make the better choice of pleasures that are purer far, and better, and which endure forever.

 

 


WAY OF SALVATION, SERMON 23 - On Praying Always paragraph 13

Intercourse with God is a necessity of moral beings, demanded by creatures as a necessity of their natures. No doubt this is true in heaven itself, and the fact that this want of their natures is so gloriously supplied there, makes heaven. The Bible represents spirits in heaven as praying. We hear them crying out, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (Rev. 6:10). True, their subjects of prayer are not in all respects the same as ours: we have things to pray for which they have no occasion to ask for themselves. They are neither sick nor sinful; but can you suppose they never pray, "Thy kingdom come?" Have they lost all sympathy with those interests of Zion? Far from it. Knowing more of the value of those interests, they no doubt feel more deeply their importance, and pray more earnestly for their promotion. From the nature of the case, God's treatment of the inhabitants of heaven must be conditioned on their voluntary course in regard to him and his kingdom. It must be governed and determined by their knowledge, their progress in knowledge, and their improvement of the means and powers at their command. Obviously their voluntary worship, gratitude, thanksgiving, and service of every sort, must vary their relations to God, and consequently his course towards them. He will do many things to them and for them which he could not do if they did not pray, and praise, and love, and study, and labour. This must be true, even in heaven, of apostles and prophets, and of all glorified saints. God makes to them successive revelations of himself, each successively higher than the preceding, and all dependent on their voluntary devotion to him and to his glory. They are for ever advancing in his service, full of worship, praise, adoration, and this only prepares them the more to be sent on missions of love and service, and to be employed as the interests of God's kingdom require. Hence we see that God's conduct towards saints in heaven depends on their own voluntary course and bearing towards him. This is a necessity of any and every moral system. If saints in heaven are moral agents, and God's government over them is also moral, all these results must follow. In this world sin exists; and in this fact we see an obvious necessity for this law of moral administration. But the holy in heaven are no less moral and responsible than the sinning on earth. The great object of God's administration is to assimilate moral beings to himself; hence he must make his treatment of them depend on their moral course towards him.

 

 


CHARLES G. FINNEY TESTIMONIAL OF REVIVALS, CHAPTER XIV. - REVIVAL AT UTICA, NEW YORK. paragraph 37 Abundant prayer - Conversion of Sheriff B. - The Lowville merchant - Beginning of opposition - Mr. Weeks' doctrines - Sudden death of the minister - Conversion of Miss F T. - Scene in the factory - Conversion of T. D. Weld - False teaching.

The doctrines preached in these revivals were the same that have been already presented. Instead of telling sinners to use the means of grace and pray for a new heart, we called on them to make themselves a new heart and a new spirit, and pressed the duty of instant surrender to God. We told them the Spirit was striving with them to induce them now to give Him their hearts, now to believe, and to enter at once upon a life of devotion to Christ, of faith, and love, and Christian obedience. We taught them that while they were praying for the Holy Spirit, they were constantly resisting Him; and that if they would at once yield to their own convictions of duty, they would be Christians. We tried to show them that everything they did or said before they had submitted, believed, given their hearts to God, was all sin, was not that which God required them to do, but was simply deferring repentance and resisting the Holy Ghost.

 

 


CHARLES G. FINNEY TESTIMONIAL OF REVIVALS, CHAPTER XX. - REVIVALS IN COLUMBIA, AND IN NEW YORK CITY. paragraph 14 Account of Mr. H. - Reorganization of his church - Invitation to New York - Anson O. Phelps - Diligence of a young woman in restitution - Conversion of Lewis Tappan - The first Free Presbyterian church.

I was very much struck, during my labors there, with the piety of Mr. Phelps. While we continued at Vandewater street, myself and wife, with our only child, were guests in his family. I had observed that, while Mr. Phelps was a man literally loaded with business, somehow he preserved a highly spiritual frame of mind; and that he would come directly from his business to our prayer meetings, and enter into them with such spirit, as to show clearly that his mind was not absorbed in business, to the exclusion of spiritual things. As I watched him from day to day, I became more and more interested in his interior life, as it was manifested in his outward life. One night I had occasion to go downstairs, I should think about twelve or one o'clock at night, to get something for our little child. I supposed the family were all asleep, but to my surprise I found Mr. Phelps sitting by his fire, in his nightdress, and saw that I had broken in upon his secret devotions. I apologized by saying that I supposed he was in bed. He replied, "Brother Finney, I have a great deal of business pressing me during the day, and have but little time for secret devotion; and my custom is, after having a nap at night, to arise and have a season of communion with God." After his death, which occurred not many years ago, it was found that he had kept a journal during these hours in the night, comprising several transcript volumes. This journal revealed the secret workings of his mind, and the real progress of his interior life.

 

 


FINNEY ON THEOLOGY, LECTURE 11 - THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD (CONTINUED part 2). paragraph 8 Veracity -- Disinterestedness -- Forbearance -- Long--suffering -- Self-denial -- Impartiality -- Beneficence -- Sovereignty.

Let it be understood, then, that by disinterestedness in God, we mean that quality of his benevolence that disposes him to will the good of his creatures from regard to them; to lay just that stress upon their good which by its intrinsic importance renders reasonable. He has no selfish reason for promoting their good, but does it for their sake. And this is indeed the only possible way in which he could promote his own good. Were he selfish in his good-will to others, this could not meet the demands of his own conscience and could not therefore result in his blessedness. It could be no real satisfaction to him to will the good of others selfishly, because the very selfishness of the willing would render it impossible for him to enjoy it. To will their good disinterestedly, for their sake, and promote their happiness rather than his own, is that which gives him enjoyment in this exercise, being conscious that he is disinterestedly willing their good for its own sake. He enjoys the good which he confers upon them. He seeks their will-being because he is interested in it; therefore when he promotes it and secures it, he is completely satisfied; he has that which he sought. He was interested in them; he sought to do them good for their sakes; and when he sees that he has secured that which he sought he is happy, and enjoys the good which he has conferred even better than they do. Hence Christ says, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Thus it is that disinterested benevolence secures his own good in seeking the good of others. He promotes his own highest glory and happiness in disinterested devotion to the good and happiness of others. Just so it is with benevolence in all beings. This is the divine economy of disinterested benevolence. Every disinterestedly benevolent being promotes his own true happiness and interest best by unselfishly devoting himself to promoting the happiness of others; and thus while benevolence denies self, it therein and thereby promotes the good of self in the highest possible manner.

 

 


FINNEY ON THEOLOGY, LECTURE 12 - THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD (CONTINUED part 3). paragraph 22 Firmness -- Severity -- Efficiency -- Simplicity -- Immutability -- Infinity -- Holiness -- Remarks.

16. INFINITY. By infinity is intended that there is absolutely no limit to his benevolence. It is not partial, it is universal; it is not merely to finite creatures but to himself as the infinite; it is goodwill to universal being; it is eternal; it is the choice of his whole mind; it is the devotion of all his attributes, by the act of his will, to this end. It is therefore an ocean, having neither shore nor bound; it is as illimitable as his nature. We know that infinity, immutability, and all these attributes, must be attributes of the divine benevolence, because he is infinite. We intuitively affirm that as his natural attributes are infinite, so his moral attributes must be infinite.