difficulties that constantly beset them in the path of duty, and feeling their own helplessness in contending with them, are led to attribute to supernatural agency, or the incorrigible depravity of human nature, much that is manifestly the result of natural causes, that may be traced to confirmed habit or defective educational training.' These they regard little power against present interests and inclinations; religion is but a superstition and a formality which common sense will not condescend to notice, when it fails to make a man more honest, more truthful, more temperate, and more generous."-(Rev. R. A. THOMPSON: Christian Theism.) "It sounds very plausibly that as out of the heart are the issues of life, the work of an enquiring Christian must begin there; but the mischief I complain of is, that in the first prosecution of this work, months or years may be consumed ere the purified fountain send forth its streams, or the repentance he is aspiring after tell on the plain and palpable doings of his ordinary conduct. . . . . To the end of his days he may be a talking and enquiring and speculating, and I doubt not, along with all this, a church-going and ordinance-loving Christian. But I am much afraid that he is, practically speaking, not in the way to the solid attainments of a Christian whose light shines before men.' "Let no one thing, not even the speculations of orthodoxy, be suffered to stand a barrier against your entrance into the field of immediate exertion."- (Dr. CHALMERS.) "There is, in many cases... a sort of jealousy lest the honours and importance of Christ's righteousness should be invaded, by any importance being given to the personal righteousness of the believer; as if the one could not be maintained as the alone valid plea on which the sinner could lay claim to an inheritance in heaven, and, at the same time, the other be urged as his indispensable preparation for its exercises and its joys." It is "fondness for the orthodoxy of what relates to a sinner's acceptance, carried to such a degree of favouritism as to withdraw its attention altogether from what relates to a sinner's sanctification; it is this which, on the pretence of magnifying a most essential doctrine, has in fact diffused a mist over the whole field of revelation, and which, like a mist in nature, not only shrouds the general landscape from all observation, but also bedims while it adds to the apparent size of the few objects that continue visible."-(Ditto.)

1 "The methods the devilmakes use of in order to your destruction are: he first attacks you by bad thoughts, and then endeavours to make you pleased with them; after this first attack his next point is to solicit your consent to those bad thoughts, and from thence he stirs you up to put them in execution; from actions frequently repeated he forms our evil habits, and our evil habits bring upon us as it were a necessity of sinning, and this necessity brings forth death, the eternal death of the sinner.". (NELSON: True Devotion.) "It is nowhere taught that there is any compulsory power in evil spirits. Neither is there any such a power as enables the devil to bewilder men. There is no deceiving power which takes away from men their full liberty. There is no sorcery, no incantation, no charm, no jugglery, by which men are deceived and misled by the power over them of evil spirits."-(H. W. BEECHER.) Nothing is more evident than that there is no inclination in man that is incorrigible, nor any temptation that is incident to our state which is insuperable. any man that pretends the contrary consider what reason has done in

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as equally beyond their power of control, and they content themselves with bemoaning their sins and deficiencies without any decided effort on their part to correct or improve them.1 Their feelings in this way come to be more and more absorbed in self, and more and more inefficient as motives to action; and they shut themselves up in indolence some, what custom, what faith, in others; let him try what reason, what discipline, what faith (from all which I never separate Divine assistance), can do in him, and I am confident he will not then stand in need of any further answer to his objection."-(LUCAS on Happiness.) "The depravity of human nature may be too easily assumed to be incorrigible by those who do not look for its causes in the deficiency of moral education." -(Rev. R. A. THOMPSON: Christian Theism.) "Athorough knowledge of the truth would lay to the charge of each one of us almost all the evils that we attribute to a foreign influence."-(VINET.) "Sin creeps upon us in our education so tacitly and undiscernably that we mistake the cause of it; and yet so prevalently and effectually that we judge it to be in our very nature, and charge it upon Adam to lessen the imputation upon us, or to increase the licence or the confidence; when every one of us is the Adam, the man of sin, and the parent of our own impurities."-(JEREMY TAYLOR.) "A wise discipline of the body would free many a devout soul from the evil thoughts with which it is haunted, and which are supposed to come from evil spirits, from the gloomy fears which are interpreted as signs of a deep-rooted unbelief, and from the despondency which is regarded as the result of the Divine displeasure."-(Rev. R. W. DALE.) There is such a thing in all of us as a lazy, listless, lifeless acquiescence in a perpetual defeat in small things or great by the power of evil." -(Rev. C. J. VAUGHAN.) The Rev. David Thomas also remarks "the very frequent absence of all earnest desire and endeavour after a truer and nobler life. There is often no conviction of any urgent necessity for it. . . . It very frequently happens that it (i.e., a purer Christian life) has ceased to be an object of pursuit or aspiration from a sense of the hopelessness of the attainment of it. However desirable it may seem to be, it is the reward of a labour which it is not possible to expend in the acquisition of it, or it is the product of the divine spirit's influence bestowed in a measure in which there is no expectation of receiving it. Is it not too commonly the case that those who are in a comparatively low spiritual condition have little thoughts of rising in this world into a state of much higher, because, with their conception of Christ's work, they do not think it imperatively necessary, or because, with their conception of the difficulty attending it and of the limitation set to the spirit's work, they do not think it practicable ?"-(Address before the Congregational Union of England and Wales, 1865.) A great number of 66 persons spend all their time and animation in a vain sighing after that unimaginable and unattainable good which they call perfection, while the common, but infinitely momentous, duties of life, towards which their attention ought really to be directed, are regarded by them as either of trifling moment, or perhaps are considered as but weights and hindrances in the way that leadeth unto life."-(Manual of Conduct.) Speaking of the religious condition of Scotland in the seventeenth century, Mr. Burton says we find "that men who had trodden in a peculiarly strict path of life, when they lapsed into wickedness, not only confessed their crimes

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through their ignorance and superstition.1

Hence the Christian comes to feel that he would a thousand times

with broad distinctness, but drew them in their darkest colours, sometimes even in the spirit of exaggeration, as if the deeper the atrocity of the crime the clearer was it that the responsibility was removed from the perpretrator to the power of evil."-(History of Scotland.)

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They are in constant contemplation of a good which they cannot reach, the very idea of which weakens or annihilates all their powers of execution, and by means of which life is made to them not a scene of enjoyment, but a constant source of disappointment and bitterness. . . . Because he cannot realize his own overstrained conceptions, he thinks nothing on earth worthy of his labour or powers, and choosing rather to dwell amidst the fancies of his own mind, he becomes a useless visionary or recluse ascetic." (Manual of Conduct.) "The religious idealist perhaps sincerely believes himself to be eminently devout, and those who witness his abstraction, his elevation, his enjoyment, may reverence his piety; meanwhile this fictitious happiness creeps on as a lethargy through the moral system, and is rendering him continually less and less susceptible of those emotions in which true religion subsists." (ISAAC TAYLOR : Natural History of Enthusiasm.) 'Whenever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly as a source of pleasure then, instead of expanding the bosom with beneficent energy, instead of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness, instead of shedding the softness and warmth of generous love through the moral system, they become a freezing centre of solitary and unsocial indulgence, and at length displace every emotion that deserves to be called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is, in fact, more impenetrable than that which usually envelopes a pampered imagination. The reality of woe is the very circumstance that paralyses sympathy; and the eyes that pour forth their floods of commiseration for the sorrows of the romance or the drama, grudge a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the unhappy.”— (ISAAC TAYLOR: Natural History of Enthusiasm.) "Solomon, in his Proverbs, speaks of the motion of the sluggard as if all his strength were spent and drained in vain and fruitless wishes and desires; he makes the finest resolutions in the world, but he never stirs from the place he is in. . . This is the vice of those who exhaust themselves quite in praising virtue, so that they have no strength left to pursue and attain it."-(FLEETWOOD.) I believe "that the discipline and cultivation of the moral character of Christian people is too much neglected, that an undue emphasis is laid upon the worth of religious emotion, and that the sacredness of the practical duties of life is depreciated. Is it not true that some religious people—many I fear-think that devotional excitement is of far more importance than truthful speech, than industry, than exact integrity, than kindness and unselfishness? (Rev. R. W. DALE.) Piety is always in that excess which entitles it to the name of superstition when it checks our exertions, or hinders us from the use of lawful and appointed means." (EDWARD IRVING.) "We are are made susceptible of the excitement of feeling, not only for the momentary gratification which attends it, but also and chiefly for the impulse and strength it gives for right action. When the excitement is sought and indulged in for its own sake and ends in the mere luxury of enjoyment, there is a waste of that energy of feeling which might have greatly served the highest purposes in the character of life." -(Rev. D. THOMAS.) "It is not an idle wish or ineffectual endeavour, but a thorough practice and performance of Christ's laws which can continue us in his

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rather forsake the busy haunts of men, and give himself up to meditation and prayer in some sequestered spot, than maintain this unceasing strife with the flesh and with the world.1

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love, and approve us righteous in his judgment."-(Rev. J. KETTLEWELI.) 'Who that has thought at all does not know the danger of moral sentiment unaccompanied by active virtue ?"— (PAXTON HOOD.) "The first punishment that befalls him who leaves good undone is to be less and less capable of doing it."-(VINET.) Dr. John Brown, speaking of medical students, says, "in them pity-as an emotion ending in itself, or at best in tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens, while pity, as a motive, is quickened and gains power and purpose."- (Hora Subseciæ.) Speaking of medical men among the wounded on a field of battle, Mr. H. W. Beecher says "they are perfeetly collected. Their voice does not tremble. They are decisive, and at times almost fierce. What is it? Do not they feel humanity? Probably there is no man on the whole ground that feels it so much. But the intensity of their feeling transmutes itself into instant activity. And the sign that they feel is what they are going through or what they are doing. There is no room for more feeling. They change it into the better form, in which feeling should always seek to develope itself."

When Christianity became corrupt "men began to think that the future and invisible world was entitled to their sole and undivided interests, that this world and its concerns were but a burden on them in their progress heavenward; and that as the concerns of the future life are spiritual and invisible, they can have little relation to things seen and material, and are therefore best secured, not by active and social exertions, but by ceaseless contentions with our own spiritual part or a daily watching over all the movements of the fancy and heart."-(Manual of Conduct.) "There is no mistake about the nature of religion more dangerous than an opinion that it is inconsistent or even unconnected with the ordinary business of life. . . . Under the influence of this mistake many have secluded themselves from the world, withdrawn from all the оссираtions of life, and given themselve up to idleness, contemplation, and solitary devotion. The life of such persons may be harmless, but it is useless; it may be freer from vice than the lives of others, but it is less virtuous. To renounce the world and fly to solitude is to renounce the station which God has allotted to us, and abandon the opportunities of doing good, and becoming good which he has given us."-(Dr. A. GERARD: Sermons.) Some people have imagined that they only renounce the world as it ought to be renounced who retire to a cloister or a monastery....They only renounce the world as they ought who live in the midst of it without worldly tempers, who comply with their share in the offices of human life without complying with the spirit that reigneth in the world." (LAW: Christian Perfection.) "Spiritual perfection has been supposed to be attained by stripping existence of everything adapted to beautify and embellish it; by fleeing to the desert, retiring into caverns living on the top of a column or a rock; renouncing society, ordinary food, comfortable apparel; by encouraging upon the person the accumulation of filth, the breed of vermin, the growth of disgusting putrid sores! Under the idea of being prepared for places of honour in the next state, men have taxed their ingenuity to deform and darken and desolate this. Nature has been outraged, reason dethroned, and the nastiest beasts on the face of the earth venerated and worshipped, as if the most meritorious virtue in man, and the most beautiful sight to the eye of God were to be

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But it must not be.1 If we would be strong we must be active, if we would grow we must strive, if we would conquer we must fight. The life of the Christian is a war

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found in some dirty wretch, who, in hairshirt, lice, and filth, affronted his Maker by frowning on his gifts, and did all he could to prove that the laws of the world were wrong."-(Rev. T. BINNEY: Both Worlds.) "There are men who seclude themselves from the world, and refuse to go into the active spheres of life, that they may preserve themselves from contamination and from sin, and they are pointed out to me as representing the ideal of Christianity. . . . I will have none of those for my ideal! A man keyed to love, made pure and powerful by it, putting himself among men, and under them, weeping for them, saving their tears by shedding his own, inspiring and leading the way, seeking, in love and suffering, for others to follow the Lord Jesus Christ; such a man represents what I conceive to be the Christian ideal."-(H. W. BEECHER.) "A piety, altogether spiritual, disconnected with all outward circumstances; religion of pure meditation and abstracted devotion was not for so compound, so imperfect a creature as man. Were total seclusion and abstraction designed to have been the general state of the world, God would have given men other laws, other rules, other faculties, and other employments."-(HANNAH MORE: Practical Piety.)

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1" Our Saviour accepts of no other separation of his Church from the other part of the world, than that which is made by truth, virtue, innocence, and holiness of life."-(Dr. WHICHCOTE.) "The happiness of a Christian does not consist in mere feelings which may deceive, nor in frames which can be only occasional; but in a settled, calm conviction that God and eternal things have the predominance in his heart."(HANNAH MORE: Practical Piety.) “We may acquire some lively impressions of God in retirement, or in the ordinances of worship; but if these impressions do not remain with us, and actuate us when we enter into the world, and all the time we are conversant with the world, they are of no moment."-(Dr. A. GERARD: Sermons.) "A due regard to the duties of our several relations is very necessary in order to our perfecting of holiness.... He that, by a pretence of serving God in acts of immediate worship, neglects to provide for his family is worse than an infidel."-(Dr. BATES: Spiritual Perfection.)

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"We are creatures formed, not barely for contemplation, but for action and employment; to be useful to one another, and to find our perfection and happiness, not only in the contemplation of the most glorious object of our thought, but in the proper exercise of our active powers."-(Principal WISHART: Sermons.) Say what men will, there is something more truly Christian in the man who gives his time, his strength, his life, if need be, for something not himself whether he call it his Queen, his country, or his colours-than in all the asceticism, the fasts, the humiliations and confessions which have ever been made."-(Miss FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.) "How often have we heard in this war of men who have actually become religious, on giving themselves to their country as soldiers ?"-(HORACE BUSHNELL.) "We are not to dream away our lives in the contemplation of distant or imaginary perfection. We are to act in an imperfect and corrupt world; and we must only contemplate perfection enough to ennoble our nature, but not to make us dissatisfied and disgusted with those faint approaches to that perfection which it would be the nature of a brute or a demon to despise."(Sir J. MACINTOSH.)