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Family Sermon on Ex. xxxii. 26 792

On Hebrews ix. 15-17

On religious Enthusiasm and irre-
ligious Practice..........

MISCEL.Discipline of Public

Schools

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THE

CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

No. 217.]

JANUARY, 1820. [No. 1. Vol. XIX.

RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATIONS.

For the Christian Observer.

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CHRISTIAN MOTIVES.

books of practical divinity,

justly reminded, that Christianity
is a religion of motives; and
scarcely a sermon is preached, or
an essay written on the subject of
self-examination, without urgent
exhortations to make our motives
the primary objects of scrutiny.
But, in endeavouring to reduce
those injunctions to practice, a
variety of questions often arise,
which cannot be provided for in
a few cursory instructions. It re-
quires a deep acquaintance with
the human heart, and a considerable
facility in reducing a multiplicity
of details to a few plain and
pointed principles, to enable an
instructor, especially from the pul-
pit, to give to exhortations of this
kind their full effect. The meshes
of the moral net are often at
once too large and too small: the
lubricity of many who ought to
be arrested, enables them to escape;
while some who were not intended
to be included, are intangled on
account of their dread of danger.
Many a penitent has been unne-
cessarily distressed by a discourse
which, forcible as it was, failed
to burst the web of sophistry which
a hardened transgressor had wound

around his heart.

The doctrine of motives seems particularly liable to this double failure. To lower the standard, would neither be scriptural nor allowable; yet, if a just standard be erected, the humble Christian is apt to feel dejected from the CHRIST, OBSERV. No. 217.

magnitude of his defects, while
the deliberate sinner tranquillizes
his conscience with the reflection,
obviously
that as such a degree of elevation

very little importance to attempt
the first stages of approximation.
The chief difficulty appears to be,
not so much in laying down gene-
ral rules, as in providing for ano-
malies and peculiarities; and con-
triving that these shall be such as
to include all those cases which
are intended to be excepted, with-
out covering others of a doubtful
description. To do this complete-
ly must be impossible, as long as
the heart of one man is contrite and
that of another callous; one render-
ed honest and simple by the salutary
operation of the Holy Spirit, the

other in its natural state of carelessness and insensibility. Yet to attempt the task is, doubtless, the business of every Christian instructor, in order that he may not wound where he should heal, or heal where he should wound.--Broad undefined assertions on the subject of motives seldom benefit either party it is by pointing out the real shades and distinctions of character, that the formalist finds himself convicted, and the penitent is released. Generalities are easily avoided by those who wish to palliate or conceal their guilt; while they are often equally liable to "make the heart of the righteous sad, whom God hath not made sad*."

• A somewhat similar remark may

be applied to vague and indefinite descriptions of the sinfulness of the human heart. A decently moral auditor is

B

In every consideration of motives, with a view to self-examination, it is necessary to inquire what ought to be (and to a considerable extent must be) the leading principle, the master passion, if we may so speak, of a renovated mind. We may reply in the words of the Apostle, "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God." As the great object proposed to himself by the Creator, in all his works, has ever been the development of his own glory, so the Christian should be incited by a similar principle. This anxiety for the glory of God, of course, includes love to him. We may, therefore, justly say that as self-love is the ruling principle of the natural mind, love to God ought to be, and will be, that of the renewed. This primary incentive is applicable to every circumstance of life, and may be ramified into all the details of our moral, social, and religious, condition. It is

more likely to be misled, than convinced by such statements. Contrasting himself with the hideous picture, without possessing that Christian sensibility which would lead him to discover the original features of resemblance-features which, but for the restraining grace of God, might have displayed themselves in the direst lineaments of the full-sized image-he takes credit for all that he conceives himself to want of the alledged standard of deformity, instead of feeling abased at the actual turpitude of his acknowledged transgressions. It is easy to conceive the recoil in a mind not open to religious truth, and not aware of the deeply rooted evil of our fallen nature, at hearing an auditory at large addressed, for example (as the writer of this remembers once to have done, ) in the language of St. Peter to Simon Magus. It is perfectly true that the germ of every sin is in every heart; but, where the preventing grace of God, acting through the medium of a good education, moral instruction, natural modesty of character, and similar circumstances, has not suffered the bad to expand and ripen into full-blown atrocities; such a regard should be paid to the actual facts

not necessary, in the present remarks, to enter into the origin and progress of this great principle. Doubtless, many advanced Christians have so long "grown in grace, and in the knowledge of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," that the principle has become, as it were, a new instinct; a second nature often operating independently of personal considerations, and exerting itself without any immediate reference to benefits hoped for or conferred. Such, at least, is usually considered to be the nature of the love of angels to God; though, even in the case of those heavenly beings themselves, a remembrance of mercies received is, probably, one great ingredient in this celestial compound. It is certainly so in the case of "the spirits of the just made perfect;" for, in attributing praise to the glorified Redeemer, they were heard in the Apocalypse to exclaim, "Thou art worthy; for

of the case, as to avoid rendering the whole instruction ineffectual on the alledged ground of its palpable inapplicability. To describe the human character as radically bad as it is, and as it is represented in Scripture, and yet to preserve, even in the eyes of the culprit himself, an undeniable verisimilitude, is a point which cannot be attained without much observation of the secret windings of the heart, with a constant habit of self-scrutiny, and an attentive study of the sacred volume. Dr. Chalmers's sermons furnish many admirable specimens of this useful talent. No man can speak more decisively and strongly of the natural character of the human heart, and of the extent of our sin both original and actual; yet, with such a just discrimination of character, such a judicious disentanglement of motives, such a perspicacious knowledge of the particular points to be pressed, and such honest skill and boldness in pressing them, that it is impossible for the most moral man, with any shew of justice, to plead guiltless to his charges, or to exempt himself from the censure on the ground of its being a mere exaggerated declamation.

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