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XIII.

RELIGION NOT A MERE FEELING, BUT AN ACTIVE
PRINCIPLE.

MATTHEW VII. 21.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

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THESE words are addressed to mankind at large. They are not, like some of our Lord's discourses, relative to the ticular circumstances of those who stood round him at the time. Christ here speaks to all his disciples, in whatever country of the world they may live, or in whatever age of the world they might come to the knowledge of his name. He speaks, in this text, as much to those who are assembled here in his worship, as to the very people who received the words from his mouth. The words themselves are the conclusion of our Saviour's celebrated sermon on the mount, and they close that divine discourse most aptly and solemnly.

When the fame of our Lord's miracles had drawn great numbers after him from every quarter of the country, from Galilee, you read, from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, from Judea, and from beyond Jordan, he deemed that a fit opportunity to acquaint them with those great moral duties which they must discharge, if they meant to be saved by becoming his followers; for which purpose he went up into a mountain, for the conveniency, it is probable, of their hearing and of his own retirement, and also in imitation, perhaps, of Moses, who delivered the blessings and curses of the old law from the summit of a hill. When the people in great multitudes were assembled round him, he pronounced that great lesson of duty, that summing up of weighty precepts, that statement of christian morals, and of a right christian disposition, which you read in the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of St Matthew; and when he had finished the particular precepts he had given them, the several distinct commands which he enjoined upon his followers, he concluded with this reflection, which was applicable to them all, and was indeed the great point he wished to leave upon their minds, and not only upon theirs, but upon the hearts and souls of all who should afterwards profess his religion; 'not every one that sayeth unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom

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of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.'

It was very natural for those who attended our Lord to feel a glow of zeal and affection, to be transported with admiration, to cry out Lord, Lord,' from the very fervency and ardor of their love and reverence, when they beheld the astonishing works which he wrought, and heard the words of salvation which flowed from his lips, or saw the sufferings which he underwent, or his meekness and resignation under them. It was natural for them, and the same thing is natural for us. When we meditate at all upon these subjects; when we turn our thoughts towards the great author and finisher of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ; when we reflect that he is our way and our life, that what we know concerning the life to come proceeds from him, that our hopes of attaining it are through him, that he is our guide and our instructer, our redeemer and mediator, that he came to lead his followers to heaven, that he laid down his own life to give them eternal life, that he still sits at the right hand of God to interest in our behalf; when we reflect, I say, upon the infinite, unutterable importance of saving our souls, and what he has done, and continues to do towards it, we cannot help crying out, Lord, Lord;' we cannot help feeling ourselves overwhelmed, as it were, with the vastness and immensity of the subject, and the deep obligation which we owe to the Saviour of the world. This sentiment is still more apt to come upon the mind when any worldly distress or affliction drives us to take refuge in religion; to fly for succour to God Almighty's protection, and to the dispensation of his righteous will in another world; 'to take hold,' as St Paul speaks, of the anchor of hope,' and the strong consolation which is ministered to us by the gospel of Christ. It is upon these occasions that we find religion to be our only stay, trust in God to be the only firm ground we can set our foot upon. No wonder, therefore, if we be drawn almost involuntarily to cry out, Lord, Lord;' that we are constrained by his love; that we feel our dependence upon him; that we are brought to understand, that to be saved in the day of judgment is that concern which wraps up all others; that there is none other name under heaven, whereby we can be saved, only the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. No wonder, I say, that in moments like these our affection towards Christianity is increased, our thoughts serious, and our devotion sincere.

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Sometimes, also, without any external causes, or any cause that we are acquainted with, strong impressions of futurity, aw

ful apprehensions of our great change, come over the mind. The things of this world are diminished to nothing, when we place them by the side of that great event which will arrive, and in a short time, to all of us. Life appears what it is, a span; inconsiderable at the longest; liable every day to be put an end to. What shadows we pursue, what shadows we are! The unsatisfactoriness of all our worldly enjoyments, the uncertainty of all our worldly hopes, seizes the imagination with irresistible force. Here then again the soul turns to God. Beaten and repulsed from every other source of confidence and contentment, it seeks them in the future mercies of a faithful Creator.

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Or again, it may and does happen, that a sudden glow, a certain warmth and elevation of heart, as to the concerns of religion, spring up at particular times in our breast; we cry, Lord, Lord!' with rapture; the promises, the views, the consolations of Christianity, fill our hearts; we rejoice, as St Paul, who felt much of this animation, expresses it, in the hope of our calling, and in the joy of the Holy Ghost.

Now concerning all these various states of mind and affection, the first thing to be said is, that they are all good. Whatever draws the soul to God, whether it be reflection upon the astonishing history of our Lord Jesus Christ, the ardor of his love, the patience of his sufferings, undertaken and undergone for our sakes; whether it be some outward visitation and discomfiture, some stroke of Providence, which brings us to ourselves, which makes us serious in the business of religion; whether it be some inward sinking and misgiving of the mind, some cloud which overcasts the spirits; or whether, on the contrary, we be raised and lifted, as it were, towards heaven by the life and flow of our devotions, still all is good. We ought to regard and accept these stirrings and motions of the mind towards religion, from whatever cause they proceed, as favorable and hopeful intimations of a righteous principle forming within us. We are to invite, cherish, and cultivate them; wait and desire the return of them; above all, be thankful for them, and account even calamities as blessings, when they tend to make us religious. It is a sorrow not to be repented of, when it leads to salvation.

Nothing that our Lord says in the text ought by any means to be construed to the undervaluing or discouraging of devout feelings of any kind, or from any cause; but the great misfortune is, these thoughts are apt to be shortlived; they are wont to be soon forgotten, and forgotten entirely. In the night we cry, Lord, Lord!' in the morning we return to our sins; that

world, with its pleasures, and honors, and cares, and contentions, which we lately thought so little worth our strife and our anxiety, courts us again with new temptations, and is pursued with fresh eagerness. That enduring, imperishable soul, the saving of which we judged the only concern we need to care about or to be afraid about, obtains not our consideration amongst the multitude of thoughts which crowd upon us; those prospects of everlasting happiness in heaven, which awhile ago opened so bright upon our view, are again shut out; some loose, sinful pursuit, some mean advantage, gets hold again of our hearts, and closes up that passage where religion was entering in. This is precisely the weakness which our Lord was aware of, and which the words of the text were intended to warn us against. To make good thoughts effectual to salvation, we must so work them into the frame of the mind, so knit and weave them into the very substance of the heart and disposition, that they be no longer merely thoughts, or merely occasional; but that they have a steady influence upon our behaviour, that they take hold of our conduct, that they be at hand to check and pluck us back when we would go about any wicked design, and that they be at hand also to remind us, and to put us forward when any good thing falls in our power to do.

This is to become a Christian; and this indeed is the difficulty of the work. The passage from thought to action, from religious sentiments to religious conduct, seems a difficult attainment. I said before, the very beginnings are blessings. Holy thoughts, though occasional, though sudden, though brought on, it may be, by calamity and affliction, though roused in us we do not know how, are still the beginnings of grace. Let no man, therefore, despise serious thoughts; let no man scorn or ridicule them in others; least of all the man who has none himself; for there is still a wide difference between him who thinks, though but occasionally, of his duty and of his salvation, and him who never permits himself to entertain such thoughts at all. One, it is true, may be far from having completed his work; the other has not begun his. Those very meditations which he despises in other men, because he sees that they have not the influence which they ought to have upon their lives and conversation, are, nevertheless, what he himself must begin with, what he himself must come to, if ever he enter truly upon a christian course. It is from good thoughts and good resolutions that the christian character must set out; it is with these it must begin; it is by these it must be formed. We cannot, however, always be thinking about religion. That is true; but

the thing wanted of us, the thing necessary for us, the thing required in the text, is, not that religion be constantly in our thoughts, but that it have a constant influence upon our behaviour; and that is a very intelligible distinction, and takes place in common life. Avarice and pecuniary gain shall have a constant influence upon a man's behaviour, that is, his actions shall constantly draw and tend to that point, and yet it may not be that his thoughts are always employed in calculating his profits or reckoning on his fortune. And that influence which a worldly principle often possesses, a religious principle may acquire. The making sure of heaven may be to one man as strong and steady a motive of action as the making a fortune is to another. Pleasing God by doing good to man, may be as fixed a point in the mind of a disciple of Jesus Christ, as the compassing some scheme of wealth or greatness is frequently to the children of this generation. The fear of offending our Maker may be as great and powerful a check upon a religious man's actions, as any consideration whatever can be in the pursuits of worldly prosperity. The matter, and what in a great measure forms the business, and the greatest difficulty of religion, is to bring our minds to this; that devout thoughts draw from us not only words, but actions; not only make us call upon him, but do his will; not only lift up our hearts to Heaven in particular seasons of meditation, but that at all seasons they keep us back from sin.

This, then, is the sum of what we have delivered. Do we find ourselves visited with pious affections, with serious and awful apprehensions of futurity, with devout and holy thoughts of God, of Jesus Christ, and of our salvation, let us be thankful for them, as for the greatest of blessings.

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But do we find these thoughts vanish, leaving no solid impression behind them; or do we find that they do not at all break off our course and habits of sinning, or interrupt us in the wicked practices into which we have fallen, or rouse us from the moral sloth and unprofitableness in which we are sunk ; let us bring to remembrance this solemn text, Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord! shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father.' By no means let us undervalue the good thoughts and good motions which we feel, or have felt; but it is necessary we should know that we are yet far short of the mark; that something is done, and that of great importance, but that more is still wanting; that we must earnestly and laboriously strive so to fasten these good intimations upon the heart, so to imprint them deeply upon the soul, as that they may convert our behaviour, beget in us

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