Hence the Christian soon finds that though his heart may be right with God, his actions come very far short of his desires or intentions.1 The willing spirit seems to be everywhere clogged and impeded by the weak flesh, which sits upon him like an incubus curbing with its material laws and affections all his free activities.2 He feels his nature

which he yet believed to be the chief object of his existence."-(Manual of Conduct.) "Ask a virtue of God never so long, reflect upon it never so seriously, read all the books that treat of it, and hear the most excellent preachers that recommend it, set the best examples of it before your eyes, and make the firmest resolutions to attain it; yet, if you really never practise it, nor exercise yourself in it, you shall never be master of it."(R. NELSON: True Devotion.) "Thousands have wept in the theatre over the trials of suffering chastity, and have gone out to commit deeds of impurity. . . . The novel has been stained by many a tear flowing from eyes which never wept over the real miseries of the poor. Sterne causing us to weep over the dead ass, and meanwhile treating his own mother with wickedness, is only one of a thousand instances recorded in the history of man, to demonstrate that the feelings which arise on the presentation of good or evil actions all belong to a different department of the human mind from the virtuous affections themselves. On account of not observing this distinction, multitudes have thought themselves good, because they have a capacity of admiring what is good."-(Dr. McCoSH : Divine Government.)

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1" Many who are become sincerely pious find it difficult to extricate their minds from certain associations established by former habits.”— (HANNAH MORE.) Though conscience and reason lead us to resolve on and attempt a new life, they cannot at once make us love it; and in the beginning obedience is doubtless very grievous to habitual sinners."(Rev. J. H. NEWMAN: Sermons.) "It must be confessed from melancholy experience that a speculative acquaintance with the rules of duty is too compatible with the violation of its dictates, and that it is possible for the convictions of conscience to be habitually overpowered by the corrupt suggestions of appetite."-(Rev. ROBT. HALL.) "I know, from experience, that habit can, in direct opposition to every conviction of the mind, and but little aided by the elements of temptation (such as present pleasure, &c.), induce a repetition of the most unworthy actions."-(JOHN FOSTER.) "You cannot, in any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to be true, if the habit of your life has been insincerity."-(Rev. F. W. ROBERTSON.)

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2" Every good soul has had experience that, in trying to raise itself to God, it has found the wings of its devotion either entangled with the vanities of the world or by the sluggishness of the flesh." (FLEETWOOD: Method of Devotion.) "Rooted bad habits .. not only destroy the peace of him who continues in them, but embitter the very penitence of him who has forsaken them."-(HANNAH MORE.) "There is nothing of which the earnest and aspiring disciple is more ready to complain than that, while all alive to the sense of his corruptions, he is scarcely sensible of the work of grace that should be going on."--(DR. CHALMERS.) Sin never ceaseth to strive for mastery in the children of God; who have an evil nature still,-an old man who is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and who is to be put off every day, denied in his desires, mortified

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debased and crippled in every direction, weak where it should be strong, domineering where it ought to be obedient; and he ever carries about with him, written as with a pen of iron, the marks and impressions of his former sins and shortcomings.'

Hence it is that many good and pious men are brought to look upon their physical nature as opposed and hostile to their spiritual interests, as animated and governed by principles and laws that are calculated to obstruct or impede their progress in divine things. To them the

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in his affections, and crucified in his appetite."-(ROMAINE: Triumph of Faith.) "I see," says the apostle Paul, "another law in my members warring against the law of my mind." "For the good that I would I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do." "To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I know not.”—(Rom. vii. 14-24.)

2"Though we are partakers of a new, holy state by faith in Christ, yet our natural state doth remain in a measure with all its corrupt principles and properties."-(W. MARSHALL: On Sanctification.) "A depraved nature still cleaves to him (i.e., the Christian), and he has the seeds of every natural corruption yet remaining in his heart. He lives likewise in a world that is full of snares and occasions suited to draw forth those

corruptions."-(Rev. J. NEWTON: Letters.) "Great sins and practical immoralities may be forgiven by God; the man may become sincerely penitent, and be thoroughly renewed in the spirit of his mind; ... but he may carry with him to the grave even, on that sanctified soul of his. scars and burns, the effects of the fires of youth, the marks and memorials of early sins, which will retain the power of making themselves felt by sudden twitchings and shootings through the heart, a power they will probably never lose."-(Rev. T. BINNEY: Both Worlds.) "A strong attachment to sin, produced by inclination, and confirmed by custom, all men allow is hard to be broken."-(Rev. J. BALGUY: Sermons.) "You," says Dr. Doddridge, addressing the Christian, "brought irregular propensities into the world along with you; and you have so often indulged those sinful inclinations, that you have greatly increased their strength; and you will soon find, in consequence of it, that these habits cannot be broken through without great difficulty. You will find, in the language of the apostle, the flesh lusting against the spirit, so that you will not be able in all instances to do the things that you would." -(Rise and Progress of Religion.) "It is our long continuance in a sinful course that hath made us so loth to leave it; it is the custom of sinning that renders it so troublesome and uneasy to men to do otherwise; it is the greatness of our guilt, heightened and inflamed by many and repeated provocations, that doth so gall our consciences, and fill our souls with so much terror; it is because we have gone so far in an evil way that our retreat is become so difficult; and because we have delayed this work so long that we are now so unwilling to go about it."—(Archbishop TILLOTSON.)

"I am out of all patience with those good but silly people who consider that they glorify God by vilifying their own corporeal nature,

Author of nature and the God of the Bible appear as separate and distinct persons, whose interests and aims are directly opposed the one to the other; and the use of reason and the progress of science are viewed with suspicion and jealousy as tending to encroach upon the province of the Almighty, or to deprive him of his rightful sovereignty.2 designating it as a 'clod of clay,' a 'dismal prison,' and applying many other epithets of an equally abusive and slanderous character."-(Rev. H. STOWELL BROWN.) We have a strange fear of our bodies, and are ever speaking as if we could right the spirit only by wronging the flesh, and could best sharpen our intellects by blunting our senses. But our souls would only be gainers by the perfection of our bodies were they wisely dealt with."-(Prof. G. WILSON.) "Both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures speak of our physical nature with honour. They never represent the body as the work of some inferior and, perhaps, malignant deity, who so contrived it that we should be constantly tempted to sin. It is God's own handiwork fearfully and wonderfully made. It is the visible temple of the Holy Ghost. . . . The body, therefore, with its instincts and wants, is not to be treated as the enemy of the soul, but as its friend-a friend of inferior rank, but still a friend."-(Rev. R. W. DALE.) "These animal affections considered in themselves, and as they are implanted in us by nature, are not vicious or blameable, nay, they are instances of the wisdom of the Creator furnishing his creatures with such appetites as tend to the preservation and welfare of their lives."-(ScouGAL: Life of God.)

"This present life, with its sorrows and joys, its business, its art, its literature, its politics-this present life was not invented by the devil to prevent us getting to heaven; it was appointed by God that we might, by discharging its humbler duties and caring for its inferior interests, be disciplined for glory, honour, and immortality."- (Rev. R. W. DALE: Discourses.) "Some have denied it to be the duty of a Christian man to fill, if called upon to do so, the office of the magistrate; they have refused to take any part in returning members to Parliament; they have abjured all interest in literature or in art; they have declined to share in any effort that may be made to improve society, excepting by the inculcation of the Gospel; they have, in short, acted on the avowed conviction that the world, as it is, is given to Satan, and that Christians, being members of a better kingdom and heirs to a higher inheritance, should abandon its concerns to the ungodly."(Organised Christianity.) "Time and eternity are represented as two things not only distinct but essentially different in their nature-the objects and interests and pursuits of the former are believed not only to have nothing in common with those of the latter, but to be rather hindrances to the pursuits of those momentous and enduring interests which it should be the chief study of all men to secure. . . . In some instances this difficulty is so morbidly felt that all temporal things become hateful and disgusting to the mind that has set itself in earnest to secure for itself a heavenly inheritance," -(Manual of Conduct.)

2 "Many piously disposed minds, we are aware, are disposed to be jealous of the discovery of law in the universe. They feel as if science were setting itself up as a rival to Deity, and attempting to drive God from one part of His dominions after another, in much the same

In the language of such persons, nature is opposed to grace, the human to the divine, reason to revelation, the body to

way as Rome extended itself in ancient times, making conquest after conquest, under a plausible pretext-in the hope that at last it might reign alone."-(Dr. M'Cosн: Divine Government.) "Science in its progress has been widening the dominion of law, and has detected its presence. where the piously disposed were accustomed to contemplate the divine power acting independently of all instrumental causes. It is now acknowledged that there are physical laws determining every fitful breeze, and every forming cloud, and every falling shower."-(Ditto.) "The moral life of multitudes is too feeble to confront the discovery that there are no regions of the universe, none of the phenomena of the material world exempt from the control of law."(Rev. R. W. DALE: Discourses.) "If men will dream that all which is ascribed to second causes is a derogation from the first, they both dishonour the work and him that framed it.”—(RICHARD BAXTER.) "There have been at various times, even among Christians, sincere but imperfectly informed men, who decried the study of the natural sciences as inimical to true religion; as if God's ever visible and magnificent revelation of his attributes in the structure of the universe could be at variance with any other revelation."-(Dr. NEIL ARNOTT.) "The religious and moral scruples which deny the essential holiness of science is infidelity, because it proceeds on a tacit separation, I fear, more common than we imagine, of the physical and moral government of the world.”—(ARCHER BUTLER: Sermons.) "We have often mourned over the attempts made to set the works against the Word of God, and thereby excite, propagate, and perpetuate jealousies fitted to separate parties that ought to live in closest union. In particular, we have always regretted that endeavours should have been made to depreciate nature with the view of exalting revelation; it has always appeared to us to be nothing else than the degrading of one part of God's works, in the hope thereby of exalting and recommending another."-(Dr. McCosн.) looking with suspicion, if not with positive hostility, on the fresh discoveries of each age, religious persons, since the days of Galileo downwards, have often erred and given just_grounds for complaint to the advocates of science."-(Prof. SHAIRP: Religion and Culture.) "I have it on the best authority that one of the leading clergymen of the day, preaching on a special occasion, spoke in antagonism to scientific men, alluding to Faraday by name. They shall be confuted by their own element fire,' added the preacher, careless of the conclusion which his audience might legitimately draw from such a two-edged argument. The accuser of the men of science was much astonished when told after his sermon, by a brother clergyman, that Faraday and other eminent physicists of the day were believers in divine revelation."-(Dr. GLADSTONE: Life of Faraday.) "How it has come to pass that physical science and religious faith regard each other with antagonism and distrust, it is not my purpose to inquire. . . . . Certainly those of us who believe that in Christ, the Creator of the universe was manifest in the flesh, have no reason for looking with alarm or hostility upon the discoveries of modern science; the unfriendliness ought not to be on our side. . . . Physical science is the ally, not the rival, of Christian faith."—(Rev. R. W. DALE.) "Year by year the hard and relentless dominion of unvarying law is visibly extending, and now there are no aspects of the material universe so wild or so mysterious that we can dream they are unbound by the iron chain of necessity."Rev. R. W. DALE.) "In times of ignorance men naturally regarded

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the spirit, morality to religion.1 Indeed, most of the errors that disfigure and bring reproach upon Christianity may be traced to the want of a clear perception of the difference that exists between faith and works, belief and conduct, thought and action, and of the principles by which they are governed.2

Thus many Christians, deeply conscious of the trials and every occurrence which they did not understand as resulting from a direct interference of supreme power. . . . But we have learned enough to perceive that the great universe is as simple and harmonious as it is immense; and that the Creator, instead of interfering separately or miraculously, in the common sense of the word, to produce every distinct phenomenon, has willed that all should proceed according to a few general laws; there is nothing in nature so truly marvellous as that the endless and beneficent variety of results which we see should spring from such simple elements."-(Dr. N. ARNOTT.) "We live in an age of science. I rejoice in it. I have no fears from its most extended and penetrating researches. The further the discoveries of science go the clearer will the proof become that the God of nature and the God of revelation are the same God."-(Dr. WARDLAW.)

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1 "Reason and faith are emanations from the Father of Light, and, consequently, there cannot be a real repugnance between them; for God cannot deny himself! A proposition which contradicts right reason, the general light of nations that have nothing common between them but the human nature, cannot be true."--(BATES' Spiritual Perfection.) "The revelations of the Bible do not contradict or contravene those of science any more than the discoveries of the telescope contradict those of the naked eye." (Albert Barnes.) "Another form of this perverted Christianity is the frequent separation, sometimes, indeed, the opposition, which is drawn between religion and morality."-(THOMPSON: Christian Theism.) "Among many religious people the very word morality is in disrepute; and, in some places, to say that a minister preaches moral sermons' is another way of saying that he does not preach the gospel." "If I preach about weights and measures' you go home, some of you, and think that your time has been wasted. This is mere morality, you say, there is no religion in it."-(Rev. R. W. DALE: Discourses.) is a most unfortunate distinction kept up... betwixt moral and evangelical preaching. It has the effect of instituting an opposition where no opposition should be supposed to exist; and a preference for the one is, in this way, made to carry along with it an hostility or an indifference to the other. The mischief of this is incalculable. It has the effect of banishing Christianity altogether from the system of human life; . . . . and that noble principle which should exert an undivided sway over every hour and minute of our existence, is restricted in its operation to those paltry fragments of time which we can hardly extort from the urgency of our secular employments."-(Dr. CHALMERS.) 2" To this crying up of faith, in opposition to reason, we may, I think, in good measure, ascribe those absurdities that fill almost all the religions which possess and divide mankind."-(JOHN LOCKE.) "The root of the evil appears to lie in a wide-spread ignorance of the true relation between religion and morals. Their separation is the destruction of both. Morality, without the sanctions of religion, has

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