the demands of his intelligence. Conscience does not approve. He has not after all true peace. He is not justified; he can not be fully and permanently satisfied that he is. He is not for any length of time satisfied with his best performance, He is conscious after all of sinning in all his holiest duties, and he is the more sure of this in proportion as he is more enlightened. He thinks to be sure that this is the universal experience of all true saints; that although neither conscience nor God is satisfied with his obedience, not even in his best frames and states, yet he thinks to be sure he has some degree of holiness and conformity to the will of God, although not enough to bring out the approbation of conscience and the smile of God upon his soul. He imagines that he has some true religion; some half-way obedience. He is a true though an imperfect saint, whose best obedience can and does satisfy neither his own sense of duty nor his God. With him, justification is a mere theory, a doctrine, an opinion, an article of faith and not a living felt reality; not an experience, but an idea, a notion, and at best a pleasing and dreamy delusion. 8. The saint has made the will of God his law, and asks for no other reason to influence his decisions and actions than that such is the will of God. He has received the will of God as the unfailing index pointing always to the path of duty. His intelligence affirms that God's will is and ought to be law or perfect evidence of what law is; and therefore he has received it as such. He therefore expects to obey it always and in all things. He makes no calculations to sin in any thing; nor in one thing more than another. He does not cast about and pick and choose among the commandments of God; professing obedience to those that are the least offensive to him, and trampling on those that call to a sterner morality and to hardier self-denial. With him there are no little sins in which he expects to indulge. He no more expects to eat too much than he expects to be a drunkard; and gluttony is as much a sin as drunkenness. He no more expects to take an advantage of his neighbor than he expects to rob him on the highway. He no more designs and expects to indulge in secret than in open uncleanness. He no more expects to indulge a wanton eye than to commit adultery with his brother's wife. He no more expects to exaggerate and give a false coloring to truth than he expects and intends to commit perjury. All sin is an abomination to him. He has renounced it ex animo. His heart has rejected sin as sin. His heart has embraced the will of God as his law. It has embraced the whole will of God. He waits only for a knowledge of what the will of God is. He needs not, he seeks not excitement to determine or to strengthen his will. The law of his being has come to be the will of God. A thus saith the Lord, immediately awakens from the depths of his soul the whole-hearted amen. He does not go about to plead for sin, to trim his To serve God and Mamways so as to serve two masters. mon is no part of his policy and no part of his wish. No: he is God's man, God's subject, God's child. All his sympathies are with God; and surely "his fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." What Christ wills, he wills; what Christ rejects, he rejects. 9. But right over against this you will find the sinner or deceived professor. God's will is not his law; but his own sensibility is his law. With him it is not enough to know the will of God; he must also have his sensibility excited in that direction before he goes. He does not mean nor expect to avoid every form and degree of iniquity. His heart has not renounced sin as sin. It has not embraced the will of God from principle, and of course has not embraced the whole will of God. With him it is a small thing to commit what he calls little sins. This shows conclusively where he is. If the will of God were his law-as this is as really opposed to what he calls little as to what he calls great sins, he would not expect and intend to disobey God in one thing more than in another. He could know no little sins, since they conflict with the will of God. He goes about to pick and choose among the commandments of God, sometimes yielding an outward obedience to those that conflict least with his inclinations, and which therefore will cost him the least self-denial, but evading and disregarding those that lay the ax to the root of the tree and prohibit all selfishness. The sinner or deceived professor does not in fact seriously mean or expect wholly to obey God. He thinks that this is common to all christians. He as much expects to sin every day against God as he expects to live. and does not think this at all inconsistent with his being a real though imperfect christian. He is conscious of indulging in some sins, and that he has never repented of them and put them away, but he thinks that this also is common to all christians, and therefore it does not slay his false hope. He would much sooner indulge in gluttony than in drunkenness because the latter would more seriously affect his reputation. He would not hesitate to indulge wanton thoughts and imagina tions when he would not allow himself in outward licentiousness because of its bearing upon his character, and as he says, upon the cause of God. He will not hesitate to take little advantages of his neighbor, to amass a fortune in this way while he would recoil from robbing on the highway or on the high seas; for this would injure his reputation with man, and as he thinks, more surely destroy his soul. Sinners sometimes become exceedingly self-righteous and aim at what they call perfection. But unless they are very ignorant they soon become discouraged and cry out, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? They, however, almost always satisfy themselves with a mere outward morality and that, as I have said, not descending to what they call little sins. LECTURE XLIII. REGENERATION. IN WHAT SAINTS AND SINNERS differ. 10. Saints are interested in and sympathize with every effort to reform mankind and promote the interests of truth and right eousness in the earth. The good of being is the end for which the saint really and truly lives. This is not merely held by him as a theory, as an opinion, as a philosophical speculation. It is in his heart, and precisely for this reason he is a saint. He is a saint just because the theory which is lodged in the head of both saint and sinner has also a lodgment and a reigning power in his heart, and consequently in his life. The fact is that saints as such have no longer a wicked heart. They are "born again," "born of God," and "they can not sin, for his seed remaineth in them, so that they can not sin because they are born of God." 66 They have a new heart," "are new creatures," "old things are passed away, and behold all things are become new." They are holy or sanctified persons. The bible representations of the new birth forbid us to suppose that the truly regenerate have still a wicked heart. The nature of regeneration also renders it certain that the regenerate heart can not be a wicked heart. His heart or choice is fixed upon the highest good of God and the universe as an end. Moral agents are so constituted that they necessarily regard truth and righteousness as conditions of the highest good of moral agents. These being necessarily regarded by them as indispensable to the end, will and must be considered as important as the end to which they sustain the relation of indispensable conditions. As they supremely value the highest good of being, they will and must take a deep interest in whatever is promotive of that end. Hence their spirit is necessarily that of the reformer. For the universal reformation of the world they stand committed. To this end they are devoted. For this end they live and move and have their being. Every proposed reform interests them and naturally leads them to examine its claims. The fact is they are studying and devising ways and means to convert, sanctify, reform mankind. Being in this state of mind they are predisposed to lay hold on whatever gives promise of good to man. A close examination will show a remarkable difference between saints and sinners in this respect. True saints love reform. It is their business, their profession, their life to promote it; consequently they are ready to examine the claims of any proposed reform; candid and self-denying and ready to be convinced however much self-denial it may call them to. They have actually rejected self-indulgence as the end for which they live and are ready to sacrifice any form of self-indulgence for the sake of promoting the good of men and the glory of God. It is not and can not be natural to them to be prejudiced against reform, to be apt to array themselves against or speak lightly of any proposed reform until they have thoroughly examined its claims and found it wanting in the essential attributes of true reform. The natural bearing or bias of the saint's mind is in favor of whatever proposes to do good, and instead of ridiculing reform in general or speaking lightly or censoriously of reform the exact opposite is natural to him. It is natural to him to revere reformers and to honor those who have introduced even what proved in the end not to be wholesome reforms if so be there is evidence that they were sincere and self-denying in their efforts to benefit mankind. The saint is truly and greatly desirous and in earnest to reform all sin out of the world, and just for this reason is ready to hail with joy and to try whatever reform seems, from the best light he can get, to bid fair to put down sin and the evils that are in the world. Even mistaken men who are honestly endeavoring to reform mankind, and denying their appetites, as many have done in dietetic reform, are deserving of the respect of their fellow men. Suppose their philoso phy to be incorrect, yet they have intended well. They have manifested a disposition to deny themselves for the purpose of promoting the good of others. They have been honest and zealous in this. Now no true saint can feel or express contempt for such reformers however much mistaken they may No; his natural sentiments and feelings will be and must be the reverse of contempt or censoriousness in respect to them. If their mistake has been injurious, he may mourn the evil, but will not, can not severely judge the honest reformer. War, slavery, licentiousness, and all such like evils and abominations are necessarily regarded by the saint as great and sore evils, and he longs for their complete and final overthrow. It is impossible that a truly benevolent mind should not thus regard these abominations of desolation. The cause of peace, the cause of anti-slavery, and that of the overthrow of licentiousness, must lie near the heart of every truly benevolent mind. I know that often sinners have a certain kind of in be. over |