The Gospel Cottage Lecturer

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TRUE RELIGION. 3Uttu I. A SIMILITUDE. Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.? 1 Tim. i. 5. Had we no other proof of the total depravity of man, and of the universality of that spiritual death, under the dominion of which he is born into this world, his reckless indifference, or unconcern, with regard to eternal things, compared with his anxiety with regard to time things, until quickened into spiritual life by the power of the Spirit, would be sufficient to confirm it as a fact, and to establish the testimony of the Holy Ghost by the Apostle Paul, that They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. There is no fear of God before their eyes. And this, not only among the manifestly irreligious, but among the masses of those who profess to believe that they are upon the high road to heaven. With regard to things temporal, how prudently and search- ingly will men examine, question, and probe, until they get to the bottom of the matter, especially if their concern have reference to their health, life, or property. Not so in religion. Not so with regard to eternal realities?with regard, in fact, to the only things which are worthy the name of real; for all else?all that belongs merely to time?will ultimately prove to be included in Solomon's sum total of man's temporals: Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity! This one great question, of infinite and eternal moment, if thought upon at all, receives from the natural or unrenewed man but the most casual and superficial examination. Education, or some mere accident, is the turning-point with such, and all the rest is taken for granted. Not so, however, with a ...