fare, and it is by doing and suffering that he is made perfect.1 It is when most brought to bear upon the everyday concerns of life that Christianity attains to its highest perfection, that it appears in its noblest and loveliest form."

66

1 "The Christian life is a continual wrestling... No condition wherein the Christian is here below is quiet. Is it prosperity or adversity? Here is work for both hands to keep pride and security down in the one, faith and patience up in the other-no place which the Christian can call privileged ground. . . . No duty can be performed without wrestling. The Christian needs his sword as much as his trowel.”—(GURNALL: Christian Armour.) “The sanctification of believers is, under God, promoted by their earthly trials; and this is the reason why in all the sorrows of life they are commanded to rejoice. . . . All life is made vigorous by being measured against competition, by resistance, by standing up against a power that was seeking to destroy it, by wrestling with some antagonistic force . . . The life of God in the soul, like all other life, is increased by being put forth and strengthened by resistance. .. Suffering in some of its many forms must be introduced. The soul must have obstacles with which to contend, temptations to resist, and enemies with which to grapple and wrestle itself up into vigour."—(Dr. H. DARLING: The Closer Walk.) What is it that promotes the most and the deepest thought in the human race? It is not learning, it is not the conduct of business, it is not even the impulse of the affections. It is suffering; and that perhaps is the reason why there is so much suffering in the world."-(ARTHUR HELPS.) "Assuming happiness to be the end of being, sorrow may be the indispensable condition through which it is to be reached."-(S SMILES.) Sufferings "are a part of God's design for the education of men in this world. They are pangs of birth into higher states." (H. W. BEECHER.) "Suffering may be the appointed means by which the highest nature of man is to be disciplined and developed." -(S. SMILES.) Perhaps to suffer is nothing else than to live more deeply. Love and sorrow are the two conditions of a profound life. Would all the dignity of our nature be revealed were it not for sorrow? From this point of view we can understand the assertion that melancholy is the characteristic of all profound natures."-(VINET.) "Out of suffering comes the serious mind; out of salvation the grateful heart, out of endurance fortitude, out of deliverance faith."—(J. RUSKIN.) "There is nothing truly beautiful which hath not about it a certain taint of sadness."-(BACON.) "All art is sorrowful," we are told; "all the children of the soul-music and painting and poetry and highest truth in all its forms- -are born from suffering." "Fate manages poets as men do singing birds; you overhang the cage of the singer and make it dark, till at length he has caught the tunes you play to him, and can sing them rightly." (J. P. RICHTER.) "It is a thing invariable and acknowledged, whether you take men of the world or pious people, that more accents of love rise from the mouth of the sorrowing than the happy, and that misfortune is in general more grateful than prosperity."-(VINET.)

266

66

66

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown;
No traveller ever reached that bless'd abode,

Who found not thorns and briars upon his road.”—(CowPER.)

'Heavenly mindedness by no means consists in abstraction from the

66

In like manner, it is owing to the difficulty that the Christian finds in carrying out his wishes and intentions into practice, in exemplifying the faith and principles of his religion in the daily life, that we so frequently find the profession of Christianity apart from the practice of it,-that we find so many persons animated, there is reason to believe, by Christian principles, not only not abounding in good works, but whose actions and conduct are frequently questionable if not actually culpable. In place of, by their good works, things or pursuits of time, and in a habit of dwelling by imagination amidst the scenes and employments of an eternal and invisible state, but in devoting ourselves to present objects and pursuits under an habitual belief that these have a relation to far greater and future interests."(Manual of Conduct.) Religious affections may be nourished in the retreats of devotion as a child is fed within doors: but it is in the open air and by the bustle of exercise that the child acquires and shows health, vigour, and agility; and it is in the field of the world, and by being introduced into its several occupations, that the religious affections obtain and display strength, firmness, and energy. It is in the world they are put to the trial, it is there we find opportunities for exerting them, and it is by being exerted there that they are improved into a commanding temper of piety. . . . . Every event, every circumstance of this state gives us opportunity for the practice of some virtue; and it is by acting virtuously in every circumstance of this state that we can be improved in holiness, and become fit for heaven. . . The shop, the exchange, the occupations of active life, form the only theatres on which the virtues of justice, fidelity, and honesty can be practised, and without constantly practising them you can have no religion."-— (Dr. A. GERARD: Sermons.) "Religion is mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world, the guiding our course amid the adverse winds and currents of temptation by the star-light of duty and the compass of divine truth; the bearing us manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great leader in the conflict of life. Never in the highest and holiest sense can he become a religious man until he has acquired those habits of daily self-denial, of resistance to temptation, of kindness, gentleness, humility, sympathy, active beneficence, which are to be acquired only in daily contact with mankind."—(Dr. CAIRD; Religion in Common Life.)

"Unstable souls, wearied with vain endeavours to keep the law that they might obtain life by it, and afterwards, taking up with a notion of the gospel devoid of power, they have at length despised that obedience which is the honour of a Christian, and essentially belongs to his character, and have abused the grace of God to licentiousness.”—(Rev. JOHn Newton.) They "pretend to be so transported and warmed with the hearing of gospel grace that to mention the law to them is to depress their spirits and to pour cold water and not oil on their fire; . . . but do not their irregular and unsavoury lives prove that none need law directions more than they?"-(Rev. R. TAYLOR: The Establishment of the Law by the Gospel.) "They are conscious of much in their spirit and habit which is at variance with the law and spirit of Christ, but they have ceased to hope for deliverance from it in this world. .. They know it is a poor example which they give of the Christian character, but they must bear

giving men cause to glorify God, they but too often, by their failings and shortcomings, bring scorn and contempt upon the sacred cause of Christianity itself. And they seek to console themselves with the thought that, after all, the heart is the great thing; and that if the heart be right with God, it is a small matter, comparatively, what their works may be; shutting their eyes to the fact that the heart cannot with it. It would often seem as though they had come to regard what is evil in it as an affliction rather than a wrong, and were called to exercise resignation in relation to it rather than repentance. They must be resigned to the evil in themselves which they cannot hope in this imperfect state to escape."-(Rev. D. THOMAS.) "Love to man is ever inculcated in our public instructions; but of those who hear and assent, how many are there who give place to envy, jealousy, wrath, a selfish disregard to the feelings, reputation, or circumstances of their neighbours?"-(Rev. D. THOMAS.) "The neglect of children, in not teaching them to govern their passions, is the true cause why many that have proved to be sincere Christians when they came to be men, have yet been very imperfect in their conversation, and their lives have been full of inequalities and breaches which have not only been matter of great trouble and disquiet to themselves, but of great scandal to religion when their light, which should shine before men, is so often darkened and obscured by these frequent and visible infirmities." — (Archbishop TILLOTSON.)

66

1"It is just matter of sadness to any Christian heart to see some, in these days, who profess much religion, and yet live in such sins as a mere heathen would abhor, and make it part of their Christian liberty so to do."-(Whole Duty of Man.) How can one be but staggered when we hear persons speaking the language of assurance that they know their acceptance with God through Christ, and have not the least doubt of their interest in all the promises, while, at the same time, we see them under the influence of unsanctified passions, of a proud, passionate, positive, worldly, selfish, or churlish carriage ?"- (Rev. JOHN NEWTON: Letters.) "There are but too many Christians who would consecrate their vices and hallow their corrupt affections, whose rugged humour and sullen pride must pass for Christian severity; whose fierce wrath and bitter rage against their enemies must be called holy zeal; whose petulancy towards their superiors or rebellion against their governors, must have the name of Christian courage and resolution."-(SCOUGAL: Life of God.) "His extravagance has furnished to the enemies of internal religion arguments, or rather invectives against the sound and sober exercises of genuine piety. They seize every occasion to represent it as if it were criminal, as the foe of morality; ridiculous as the infallible test of an unsound mind; mischievous as hostile to active virtue; and destructive as the bane of public utility." -(H. MORE: Practical Piety.) "The greatest enmity to religion is to profess it and to live unanswerably to it. A Jew or a Turk is not so great an enemy to Christianity as a lewd and vicious Christian."(Archbishop TILLOTSON.)

"Some, when they are taught by the Scriptures that we are saved by faith-through faith without works-do begin to disregard all obedience to the law as not at all necessary to salvation, and do account themselves obliged to it only in point of gratitude; if it be wholly neglected, they

possibly be right with God unless they bring forth fruits

doubt not but free grace will save them harmless."-(MARSHALL: On Sanctification.) "Because the Gospel promises salvation and a happy sentence to faith, love, repentance, our being in Christ, our knowing Christ, and other things besides obedience, they conclude that they shall be acquitted at that bar upon the account of any, or of all of these, though they do not obey them. They make faith, love, repentance, and the rest to be something separate from obedience; something which will save them when that is wanting; so that, if they be in Christ, if they know and believe with the mind, and love and repent in their hearts, their hope is to be absolved at the last day, be their lives and actions never so disobedient..... When pardon is promised to faith, to love, to repentance, or anything else, it is never promised to them separate from obedience, but as containing it. Obedience is still that for which a man is saved and pardoned."(Rev. J. KETTLEWELL: Christian Obedience.) "Is it not the case," says Dr. Hammond, "that of the two sorts of things that belong to another life-the vision which is peculiar to that state is by men desired to be anticipated and acquired here, and the love and purity which also belong to it are taken for impertinent things that we are not concerned in?" (Practical Catechism.) "They are a large class in every church who regard sanctification as occupying the subordinate place of furnishing but an evidence of our salvation.' They "consider that the Bible, in enforcing sanctification, means to say no more than 'Do good works that you may have an evidence that you are justified by faith.""-(Professor SMEATON.) "The want of the legal is a great blot on theology, and a practical danger in religion. It has often led to a hazy latitudinarianism, or to what is even worse, an exaggerated antinomian evangelism; great raptures and gross viciousness going together; men thinking they are so spiritual that their bodies may do as they like."-(Dr. DUNCAN : Life of, by Dr. D. Brown.) “There is such a thing in all of us practical resting upon the atonement, either in the present or in the future, as something which shall make up for all else, and carry the soul, however earthly and sin-bound, safely across the boundary line at last, between death and life."-(Rev. C. J. VAUGHAN.) "Good and pious works never constitute a good and pious man, but a good and pious man performs good works; the fruit does not bring forth the tree, but the tree the fruit."(LUTHER.) "Men talk of their faith, repentance, love to God-these are precious graces; but why do they not let us see those walking abroad in their daily conversation ? Surely, if such guests were in the soul, they would look out sometimes at the window, and be seen abroad in this duty and that holy action."-(GURNALL: Christian Armour.) faith in Christ regards his blood and righteousness as the atonement and propitiation for the sins we forsake, but to regard them as procuring an indulgence for us to continue in sin would be the most horrid profanation."(Principal WISHART: Sermons.) "Don't fall into the error of supposing that it will be all the same at last, whatever sins a man may have committed, if he only comes to be pardoned by God, and to have the guilt of them washed away. It will not be all the same; certainly not in this world, nor probably in the next either."-(Rev. T. BINNEY.) "You fall into a ruinous mistake if you suppose that a solitary precept of the moral law was repealed, its authority weakened, or its sanctions and penalties withdrawn, when you repented of sin and trusted in the mercy of God; for every moral offence, no matter who commits it, there is punishment, loss, and shame."-(Rev. R. W. DALE.)

... as a

"True

"Great

corresponding therewith,-that, in the language of Scripture, "faith without works is dead being alone."

Christianity is not faith alone, neither is it works alone, but it is faith and works together, and acting in harmony,

multitudes of ignorant people, that live under the Gospel, harden their hearts in sin, and ruin their souls for ever, by trusting in Christ for such an imaginary salvation as consisteth not at all in holiness, but only in forgiveness of sin and deliverance from everlasting torments."-(MARSHALL: On Sanctification.) "Believers are not under the curse, rigour, and bondage of the law; but they are under the obligation of its commands, as it binds them to lead a blameless, holy life. When they are not under its maledictive power, they are under its directive force. When they have it not to condemn them for their sins, they have it, as a rule, to direct and govern them in their lives."-(R. TAYLOR.) "If we think that Christ has so absolutely purchased salvation for us as to disengage us from the obligation of our utmost obedience, and to release us from labouring and striving diligently, according to the farthest extent of our power, to serve and please the great God; to imitate His perfections; to exterminate as far as possible all sin and impurity out of our souls; he that hath such an unreasonable preposterous faith, I doubt not, will find himself as much wide of the mark in the affair of his salvation as he that believes

nothing relating to it."-(C. How: Meditations.) "Do not imagine that, by rejecting human virtue from any place in our title deed to heaven, we therefore reject it from an indispensable place in the personal character of all who are admitted there. We make confident assertion of the two propositions . . that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law, and that without holiness no man shall see God.”—(Dr. CHALMERS.)

66

"It was an unhappy division_that has been made between faith and works. Though in my intellect I may divide them, just as in the candle I know there is both light and heat; but yet put out the candle and they are both gone: one remains not without the other; so 'tis between faith and works. Nay, to a right conception: Fides est Opus."-(Selden: Table Talk.) What in Scripture stands opposed to faith are works without faith; never do they place faith and the works of faith in antagonism to each other. Works are but a continuation of faith. Faith only begins where the will begins, where the soul is employed; where, in a word, there is action."-(VINET.) Faith is a noble exercise of all the human faculties-it is the harmony of the reason, the conscience, and the heart, with regard to a doctrine given you as divine." (Ditto.) "Affections cannot substantially and truly subsist without producing right actionsfor never let it be forgotten that a pious inclination, which has not life and vigour sufficient to ripen into action when the occasion presents itself, and a right action, which does not grow out of a sound principle, will neither of them have any place in the account of real goodness. A good inclination will be contrary to sin, but a mere inclination will not subdue sin."-(H. MORE: Practical Piety.)

"What profit lies in barren faith—

And vacant yearning though with might,

To scale the heaven's highest height,

Or dive below the wells of death ?"-(TENNYSON.)