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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 Under the influence of this mistake many have secluded themselves from the world, withdrawn from all the оссираtions of life, and given themselve up to idleness, contemplation, and solitary devotion.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 grow we must strive, if we would The life of the Christian is a war

be active, if we would conquer we must fight.2

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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; a 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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2 "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.)

fare, and it is by doing and suffering that he is made perfect.1 It is when most brought to bear upon the everyday concerns of life that Christianity attains to its highest perfection, that it appears in its noblest and loveliest form."

1 "The Christian life is a continual wrestling... No condition wherein the Christian is here below is quiet. Is it prosperity or adversity? Here is work for both hands to keep pride and security down in the one, faith and patience up in the other-no place which the Christian can call privileged ground. . . . No duty can be performed without wrestling. The Christian needs his sword as much as his trowel."-(GURNALL: Christian Armour.) "The sanctification of believers is, under God, promoted by their earthly trials; and this is the reason why in all the sorrows of life they are commanded to rejoice. All life is made vigorous by being measured against competition, by resistance, by standing up against a power that was seeking to destroy it, by wrestling with some antagonistic force The life of God in the soul, like all other life, is increased by being put forth and strengthened by resistance. Suffering in some of its many forms must be introduced. The soul must have obstacles with which to contend, temptations to resist, and enemies with which to grapple and wrestle itself up into vigour."—(Dr. H. DARLING: The Closer Walk.) "What is it that promotes the most and the deepest thought in the human race? It is not learning, it is not the conduct of business, it is not even the impulse of the affections. suffering; and that perhaps is the reason why there is so much suffering in the world."-(ARTHUR HELPS.) "Assuming happiness to be the end of being, sorrow may be the indispensable condition through which it is to be reached."-(S SMILES.) Sufferings are a part of God's design for the education of men in this world. They are pangs of birth into higher states." (H. W. BEECHER.) Suffering may be the appointed means by which the highest nature of man is to be disciplined and developed." -(S. SMILES.) 'Perhaps to suffer is nothing else than to live more deeply. Love and sorrow are the two conditions of a profound life. . Would all the dignity of our nature be revealed were it not for sorrow?

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From this point of view we can understand the assertion that melancholy is the characteristic of all profound natures."-(VINET.) "Out of suffering comes the serious mind; out of salvation the grateful heart, out of endurance fortitude, out of deliverance faith."-(J. RUSKIN.) "There is nothing truly beautiful which hath not about it a certain taint of sadness." (BACON.) "All art is sorrowful," we are told; "all the children of the soul-music and painting and poetry and highest truth in all its forms-are born from suffering." "Fate manages poets as men do singing birds; you overhang the cage of the singer and make it dark, till at length he has caught the tunes you play to him, and can sing them rightly." (J. P. RICHTER.) "It is a thing invariable and acknowledged, whether you take men of the world or pious people, that more accents of love rise from the mouth of the sorrowing than the happy, and that misfortune is in general more grateful than prosperity."-(VINET.)

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown;
No traveller ever reached that bless'd abode,

Who found not thorns and briars upon his road."— (CowPER.)

2 "Heavenly mindedness by no means consists in abstraction from the

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In like manner, it is owing to the difficulty that the Christian finds in carrying out his wishes and intentions into practice, in exemplifying the faith and principles of his religion in the daily life, that we so frequently find the profession of Christianity apart from the practice of it, that we find so many persons animated, there is reason to believe, by Christian principles, not only not abounding in good works, but whose actions and conduct are frequently questionable if not actually culpable.' In place of, by their good works, things or pursuits of time, and in a habit of dwelling by imagination amidst the scenes and employments of an eternal and invisible state, but in devoting ourselves to present objects and pursuits under an habitual belief that these have a relation to far greater and future interests."(Manual of Conduct.) Religious affections may be nourished in the retreats of devotion as a child is fed within doors: but it is in the open air and by the bustle of exercise that the child acquires and shows health, vigour, and agility; and it is in the field of the world, and by being introduced into its several occupations, that the religious affections obtain and display strength, firmness, and energy. It is in the world they are put to the trial, it is there we find opportunities for exerting them, and it is by being exerted there that they are improved into a commanding temper of piety..... Every event, every circumstance of this state gives us opportunity for the practice of some virtue; and it is by acting virtuously in every circumstance of this state that we can be improved in holiness, and become fit for heaven. . . . The shop, the exchange, the occupations of active life, form the only theatres on which the virtues of justice, fidelity, and honesty can be practised, and without constantly practising them you can have no religion." (Dr. A. GERARD: Sermons.) "Religion is mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world, the guiding our course amid the adverse winds and currents of temptation by the star-light of duty and the compass of divine truth; the bearing us manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great leader in the conflict of life. Never in the highest and holiest sense can he become a religious man until he has acquired those habits of daily self-denial, of resistance to temptation, of kindness, gentleness, humility, sympathy, active beneficence, which are to be acquired only in daily contact with mankind."(Dr. CAIRD; Religion in Common Life.) I "Unstable souls, wearied with vain endeavours to keep the law that they might obtain life by it, and afterwards, taking up with a notion of the gospel devoid of power, they have at length despised that obedience which is the honour of a Christian, and essentially belongs to his character, and have abused the grace of God to licentiousness." (Rev. JOHN NEWTON.) They "pretend to be so transported and warmed with the hearing of gospel grace that to mention the law to them is to depress their spirits and to pour cold water and not oil on their fire; but do not their irregular and unsavoury lives prove that none need law directions more than they?"-(Rev. K. TAYLOR: The Establishment of the Law by the Gospel.) "They are conscious of much in their spirit and habit which is at variance with the law and spirit of Christ, but they have ceased to hope for deliverance from it in this world. They know it is a poor example which they give of the Christian character, but they must bear

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giving men cause to glorify God, they but too often, by their failings and shortcomings, bring scorn and contempt upon the sacred cause of Christianity itself. And they seek to console themselves with the thought that, after all, the heart is the great thing; and that if the heart be right with God, it is a small matter, comparatively, what their works may be; shutting their eyes to the fact that the heart cannot with it. It would often seem as though they had come to regard what is evil in it as an affliction rather than a wrong, and were called to exercise resignation in relation to it rather than repentance. They must be resigned to the evil in themselves which they cannot hope in this imperfect state to escape."-(Rev. D. THOMAS.) "Love to man is ever inculcated in our public instructions; but of those who hear and assent, how many are there who give place to envy, jealousy, wrath, a selfish disregard to the feelings, reputation, or circumstances of their neighbours?"-(Rev. D. THOMAS.) "The neglect of children, in not teaching them to govern their passions, is the true cause why many that have proved to be sincere Christians when they came to be men, have yet been very imperfect in their conversation, and their lives have been full of inequalities and breaches which have not only been matter of great trouble and disquiet to themselves, but of great scandal to religion when their light, which should shine before men, is so often darkened and obscured by these frequent and visible infirmities." — (Archbishop TILLOTSON.)

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1"It is just matter of sadness to any Christian heart to see some, in these days, who profess much religion, and yet live in such sins as a mere heathen would abhor, and make it part of their Christian liberty so to do."-(Whole Duty of Man.) How can one be but staggered when we hear persons speaking the language of assurance that they know their acceptance with God through Christ, and have not the least doubt of their interest in all the promises, while, at the same time, we see them under the influence of unsanctified passions, of a proud, passionate, positive, worldly, selfish, or churlish carriage ?"- (Rev. JOHN NEWTON: Letters.) "There are but too many Christians who would consecrate their vices and hallow their corrupt affections, whose rugged humour and sullen pride must pass for Christian severity; whose fierce wrath and bitter rage against their enemies must be called holy zeal; whose petulancy towards their superiors or rebellion against their governors, must have the name of Christian courage and resolution."-(SCOUGAL: Life of God.) "His extravagance has furnished to the enemies of internal religion arguments, or rather invectives against the sound and sober exercises of genuine piety. They seize every occasion to represent it as if it were criminal, as the foe of morality; ridiculous as the infallible test of an unsound mind; mischievous as hostile to active virtue; and destructive as the bane of public utility." -(H. MORE: Practical Piety.) "The greatest enmity to religion is to profess it and to live unanswerably to it. A Jew or a Turk is not so great an enemy to Christianity as a lewd and vicious Christian."(Archbishop TILLOTSON.)

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"Some, when they are taught by the Scriptures that we are saved by faith-through faith without works-do begin to disregard all obedience to the law as not at all necessary to salvation, and do account themselves obliged to it only in point of gratitude; if it be wholly neglected, they

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