THE DUTY

OF

GIVING AN IMMEDIATE DILIGENCE TO THE BUSINESS OF
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

BEING AN

ADDRESS

TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE PARISH OF KILMANY.

WHEN one writes a letter to an intimate, | a distance from that scene to which I was and a much loved friend, he never thinks of most alive, and I feel a deadness to every the graces of the composition. He unbosoms other scene. The people who are now himself in a style of perfect freeness and sim- around me, carry an unquestionable kindplicity. He gives way to the kindly affec-ness in their bosoms, and vie with one antions of his heart, and though there may be other in the expression of it. I can easily many touches of tenderness in his perform-perceive that there exists abundantly among ance, it is not because he aims at touches of them all the constituents of a highly interany kind, but because all the tenderness that esting neighbourhood, and it may look cold is written, is the genuine and the artless and ungrateful in me that I am not interesttranscript of all the tenderness that is felt. ed. But it takes a time before the heart can Now conceive for a moment, that he wrote attune itself to the varieties of a new situahis letter under the consciousness that it tion. It is ever recurring to the more fawas to be broadly exhibited before the eye miliar scenes of other days. The present of the public, this would immediately ope- ministers no enjoyment, and in looking to rate as a heavy restraint upon him. A man the past the painful circumstance is, that would much rather pour the expression of while the fancy will not be kept from strayhis friendship into the private ear of him ing to that neighbourhood which exercises who was the object of it, than he would do over it all the power of a much-loved home, it under the full stare of a numerous com- the idea that it is home no longer comes pany. And I, my brethren, could my time with dread reality upon the mind, and turns have allowed it, would much rather have the whole to bitterness. written my earnest and longing aspiration for the welfare of you all by a private letter to each individual, than by this general Address, which necessarily exposes to the wide theatre of the public all that I feel, and all that I utter on the subject of my affectionate regard for you.

It were better, then, for the exercise to which I have now set myself, that I shut out all idea of the public; and never, within the whole recollection of my life, was I less disposed to foster that idea. It may be observed, that the blow of some great and calamitous visitation brings a kind of insensibility along with it. I ought not to lament my withdrawment from you as a calamity, but it has had all the effect of a calamity upon me. I am removed from those objects which habitually interested my heart, and, for a time, it refuses to be interested in other objects. I am placed at

With a heart thus occupied, I do not feel that the admission of the public into our conference will be any great restraint upon me. I shall speak to you as if they were not present, and I do not conceive that they can take a great interest in what I say, because I have no time for the full and explicit statement of principles. I have this advantage with you that I do not have with others, that with you I can afford to be less explicit. I presume upon your recollections of what I have, for some time, been in the habit of addressing to you, and flatter myself that you may enter into a train of observation which to others may appear dark, and abrupt, and unconnected. penning this short Address, I follow the impulse of my regard for you. You will receive it with indulgence, as a memorial from one who loves you, who is ever with you in heart, though not in person; who

In

classes among the dearest of his recollec-pleasure, and spends his days in all the tions, the tranquil enjoyments he has had thoughtlessness of one who walks in the in your neighbourhood; who carries upon counsel of his own heart, and in the sight his memory the faithful image of its fields of his own eyes, provided that his love of and of its families; and whose prayers for society leads him to share with others the you all is, that you may so grow in the enjoyment of all these gratifications, and fruits of our common faith, as to be made his wealth enables him, and his moral meet for that unfading inheritance where honesty inclines him, to defray the expense sorrow and separation are alike unknown. of them. Were I to sit down for the purpose of drawing out a list of all the actions which may be called sinful, it would be long before I could complete the enumeration. Nay, I can conceive, that by adding one peculiarity after another, the variety may be so lengthened out as to make the attempt impossible. Lying, and stealing, and breaking the Sabbath, and speaking evil one of another, these are all so many sinful actions; but circumstances may be conceived which make one kind of lying different fom another, and one kind of theft different from another, and one kind of evil speaking different from another, and in this way the number of sinful actions may be greatly swelled out; and should we attempt to take the amount, they may be like the host which no man could number, and every sinner, realizing one of these varieties, may wear his own peculiar complexion, and have a something about him, which marks him out, and signalizes him from all the other sinners by whom he is surrounded.

Yet, amid all this variety of visible aspect, there is one summary expression to which all sin may be reduced. There is one principle which, if it always existed in the heart, and were always acted upon in the life, would entirely destroy the existence of sin, and the very essence of sin lies in the want of this one principle. Sin is a want of conformity to the will of God; and were a desire to do the will of God at all times the overruling principle of the heart and conduct, there would be no sin. It is this want of homage to him and to his authority, which gives to sin its essential character. The evil things coming out of the heart, which is the residence of this evil principle, may be exceedingly various, and may impart a very different complexion to different individuals. This complexion may be more or less displeasing to the outward eye. The evil speaker may look to us more hateful than the voluptuary, the man of cruelty than the man of profaneness, the breaker of his word than the breaker of the Sabbath. I believe it will generally be found, that the sin which inflicts the more visible and immediate harm upon men, is, in the eye of men, the more hateful sin. There is a readiness to execrate falsehood, and calumny, and oppression; and along with this readiness there is an indulgence for the good-humoured failings of him who is the slave of luxury, and makes a god of his

Behold, then, one frequent source of delusion. He whose sins are less hateful to the world than those of others, wraps up himself in a kind of security. I wrong no man. I have a heart that can be moved by the impulses of compassion. I carry in my bosom a lively sentiment of indignation at the tale of perfidy or violence; and surely I may feel a satisfaction which others have no title to feel, who are guilty of that from which my nature recoils with a generous abhorrence. He forgets all the while, that sin, in its essential character, may have as full and firm a possession of his heart, as of the man's with whom he is comparing himself: that there may be an entire disownal and forgetfulness of God; that not one particle of reverence, or of acknowledgment, may be given to the Being with whom he has to do; that whatever he may be in the eye of his neighbour, in the eye of him who seeth not as man seeth, he is guilty; that, walking just as he would have done though there had been no divine government whatever, he is a rebel to that government; and that amid all the complacency of his own feelings, and all the applause and good liking of his acquaintances, he wears all the deformity of rebelliousness in the eye of every spiritual being, who looks at the state of his heart, and passes judgment upon him by those very principles which are to try him at the great day when the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open.

If this were kept in view, it would lead to a more enlightened estimate of the character of man, than man in the thoughtlessness and unconcern of his natural state ever forms. It would lead us to see, that under all the hues and varieties of character, diversified as they are by constitutional taste, and the power of circumstances, there lurks one deep and universal disease, and that is the disease of a mind labouring under alienation from God, and without any practical sense of what is due to him. You will all admit it to be true, that the heart of a man may be under the full operation of this deadly poison, while the man himself has a constitutional taste for the pleasures of social intercourse. You see nothing unlikely or impossible in this combination. Now I want you to go along with me, when I carry my assertion still further; and sure I am that experience bears me out when I say, that the heart of a man may be under

the full operation of a dislike or indiffer- tion. Let us be fearful how we urge such ence to God, while the man himself has and such visible reformations, either upon a constitutional abhorrence at cruelty, a ourselves or those around us, lest they be constitutional repugnance to fraud, a con- made to stand in the place of that grand stitutional antipathy to what is uncour- renewing process, by which the soul, dead teous in manners, or harsh and unfeeling in trespasses and sins, is made alive unto in conversation, a constitutional gentleness God. Let us labour to impress the neces of character; or, to sum up the whole in sity of this process, and seeing the utter one clause, a man may be free from many inability of man to change his own heart, things which give him a moral hatefulness let us turn his eye from any exertions of in the eye of others, and he may have his own, to that fulness which is in Christ many things which throw a moral loveli- Jesus, through whom alone he can obtain ness around him, and the soul be under the the forgiveness of all his sins, and such a entire dominion of that carelessness about measure of power resting upon him, as God, which gives to sin its essential cha- carries along with it all the purifying inracter. And upon him, even upon him, fluences of a spiritual reformation. In the graceful and engaging as he may be by the mean time, let us take care how we speak lustre of his many accomplishments, the about good works. Let the very mention saying of the Bible does not fail of being of them put us into the defensive attitude realised, that "the heart of man is deceitful of coldness and suspicion; and instead of above all things, and desperately wicked; giving our earnestness or our energy to who can know it?" them, let us press upon ourselves and others the exercises of that faith, by which alone we are made the workmanship of God, and created unto such good works as he hath ordained that we should walk in them.'

And thus it is, that our great and ultimate aim in the reformation of a sinner, is the reformation of his heart. There may be many reformations short of this, and in which many are disposed to rest with de- Now, there is a great deal of truth throtighceitful complacency. I can conceive, that out the whole of this train of sentiment; the man who formerly stole may steal no but truth contemplated under such an asmore, not because he is now sanctified, pect, and turned to such a purpose, as has and feels the obligation of religious princi- the effect of putting an inquirer into a prac ple, but because he is now translated into tical attitude, which appears to me to be better circumstances, and by the power of unscriptural and wrong. I would not have example, has contracted that tone of ho- him keep his hand for a single moment nourable feeling which exists among the from the doing of that which is obviously upper classes of society. Here, then, is a right. I would not have him to refrain reformation of the conduct, while the heart, from grappling immediately with every in respect of that which constitutes its ex- one sin which is within the reach of his ceeding sinfulness, is no better than before. exertions. I would not have him to incur The old leaven of ungodliness may over- the delay of one instant in ceasing to do spread its every desire, and its every affec- that which is evil; and I conceive that it is tion; and while the outer man has been not till this is begun that he will learn to washed of one of its visible deformities, the do that which is well. It ought not to re inner man may still persist in its unmind-strain the energy of his immediate doing, fulness of God; and the pollution of this that he is told how doings are of no acgreatest and vilest of all moral turpitude, count, unless they are the doings of one may adhere to it as obstinately as ever. who has gone through a previous regeneraNow, it appears to me, that these views, tion. This ought not to keep him from true in themselves, and deserving to be carried along with us through every inch of our religious progress, have often been practically misapplied. I can conceive an inquirer under the influence of these views, to fall into such a process of reflection as the following: 'If the outer conduct be of no estimation in the sight of God, unless it stand connected with the actings of a holy principle in the heart, let us begin with the heart, and from the establishment of a holy principle there, purity of conduct will follow as an effect of course. Let us beware of laying an early stress upon the doings of the outer man, lest we and others should have our eye turned from the reformation of the inner man, as the main and almost the exclusive object of a Christian's ambi

doing. It should only lead him to combine with the prescribed doing, an earnest aspiring after a cleaner heart, and a better spirit than he yet finds himself to have. It is very true, that a man may do an outwardly good thing, and rest in what he has done. But it is as true, that a man may do the outwardly good thing he is bidden do and, instead of resting, may look forward with diligent striving, and earnest, humble prayer, to some greater things than this. Now, this last my brethren, is the attitude I want to put you into. Let the thief give up his stealing at this moment. Let the drunkard give up his intemperance. Let the evil speaker give up his calumnies. It the doer of all that is obviously wro break off his sins, and turn him to the

doing of all that is obviously right. Let no one thing, not even the speculations of orthodoxy,* be suffered to stand a barrier against your entrance into the field of immediate exertion. I raise the very first blow of my trumpet against the visible iniquities which I see to be in you, and if there be any one obviously right thing you have hitherto neglected, I will not consume one particle of time before I call upon you to do it.

It is quite in vain to say that all this is not called for, or that I am now spending my strength and your time in combating an error which has no practical existence. You must be quite familiarised with the melancholy spectacle of a zealous professor mourning over the sinfulness of his heart, and, at the same time putting forth his hand, without one sigh of remorse, to what is sinful in ordinary conduct. Have you never witnessed one, who could speak evil of his neighbour, and was at the same time trenching among what he thought the speculations of orthodoxy, and made the utter corruption of the soul of man one of these speculations? Is it not enough to say that he is a mere speculative Christian? for the very same thing may be detected in the practice of one who feels a real longing to be delivered from the power of that sin, which he grieves has such an entire dominion over him. And yet, strange to tell, there is many an obvious and every-day sin, which is not watched against, which is not struggled against, and the commission of which gives no uneasiness whatever. The man is, as it were, so much occupied with the sinfulness of his heart, that he neither feels nor attends to the sinfulness of his conduct. He wants to go methodically to work. He wants to begin at the beginning, and he forms his estimate of what the beginning is upon the arrangements of human speculations.

tian faith, combined with what is visible in the christian practice, being at a dead stand, and not one inch of sensible progress being made in any one thing which the eye can witness, or the hand can lay a tangible hold upon. The man is otherwise employed. He is busy with the first principles of the subject. He still goes on with his wonted peevishness within doors, and his wonted dishonesties without doors. He has not yet come to these matters. He is taken up with laying and labouring at the foundation. The heart is the great subject of his anxiety; and in the busy exercise of mourning, and confessing, and praying, and studying the right management of his heart, he may take up months or years before he come to the deformities of his outward and ordinary conduct. I will venture to go farther, my brethren, and assert, that if this be the track he is on, it will be a great chance if he ever come to them at all. To the end of his days he may be a talking, and inquiring, and speculating, and I doubt not, along with all this, a church-going and ordinance-loving Christian. But I am much afraid that he is, practically speaking, not in the way to the solid attainments of a Christian, whose light shines before men. All that meets the eye of daily observers, may have undergone no change whatever, and the life of the poor man may be nothing better than the dream of a delusive and bewildering speculation.

Now, it is very true that, agreeably to the remarks with which I prefaced this argument, the great and ultimate aim of all reformation is to reform the heart, and to bring it into such a state of principle and desire, that God may be glorified in soul and in spirit, as well as in body. This is the point that is ever to be sought after, and ever to be pressed forward to. Under a sense of his deficiencies from this point, a true Christian will read diligently, that he may learn the gospel method of arriving at it. It sounds very plausibly, that as out of He will pray diligently that the clean heart the heart are the issues of life, the work of may be created, and the right spirit may be an inquiring Christian must begin there; renewed within him. The earnestness of but the mischief I complain of is, that in his attention to this matter will shut him up the first prosecution of this work, months more and more into the faith of that perfect or years may be consumed ere the purified sacrifice, which his short-comings from a fountain send forth its streams, or the re- holy and heart-searching law will ever repentance he is aspiring after tell on the mind him of, as the firm and the only ground plain and palpable doings of his ordinary of his acceptance with God. The same hoconduct. Hence, my brethren, the morti- nest reliance on the divine testimony, which fying exhibition of great zeal, and much leads him to close with the doctrine of the talk, and diligent canvassing and conversing atonement, and to rejoice in it, will also lead about the abstract principles of the chris-him to close with the doctrine of sanctifica

* Sorry should I be, if a term expressive of right notions on the most interesting of all subjects, were used by me with a levity at all calculated to beget an indifference to the soundness of your religious opinion, or to divert your most earnest attention from those inquiries, which have for their object the true will, and the true way of God for the salvation of men.

tion, and diligently to aspire after it. Now, in the business of so aspiring after this object, it is not enough that he read diligently in the Word; it is not enough that he pray diligently for the Spirit. These are two ingredients in the business of seeking after his object, but they are not the only ones; and what I lament is, that a fear about the

entireness of his orthodoxy leads many a versations. Each of these would find him

self to have strength for these things, were the inducement of a certain temporal reward held out, or the dread of a certain temporal punishment were made to hang over him Now, for the temporal punishment, I substitute the call of, "Flee from the coming wrath." Let this call have the

zealous inquirer to look coldly and askance at another ingredient in this business. He should not only read diligently, and pray diligently, but he should do diligently every one right thing that is within his reach, and that he finds himself to have strength for. Any one author who talks of the insignificance of doings, in such a way as practi-effect it should have, and the effect it actually cally to restrain an inquirer from vigorously and immediately entering upon the performance of them, misleads that inquirer from the scriptural method, by which we are directed to a greater measure of light and of holiness than we are yet in possession of He detaches one essential ingredient from the business of seeking. He may set the spirit of his reader a roaming over some field of airy speculation; but he works no such salutary effect upon his spirit, as evinces itself by any one visible or substantial reformation. I have often and often attempted to press this lesson upon you, my brethren; and I bear you testimony, that, while a resistance to practical preaching has been imputed to the zealous professors of orthodoxy, you listened with patience, and I trust not without fruit, when addressing you as if you had just begun to stir yourselves in the matter of your salvation, I ranked it among my preliminary instructions, that you should cease from the evil of your doings; that you should give up all that you know to be wrong in your ordinary conduct; that the thief should restrain himself from stealing, the liar from false hood, the evil speaker from backbiting, the slothful labourer in the field from eye-service, the faithless housemaid in the family from all purloining and all idleness.

The subterfuges of hypocrisy are endless; and if it can find one in a system of theology, it will be as glad of it from that quarter as from any other. Some there are who deafen the impressions of all these direct and immediate admonitions, by saying, that before all these doings are insisted on, we must lay well and labour well at the foundation of faith in Christ, without whom we can do nothing. The truth, that without Christ we can do nothing, is unquestionable; but it would take many a paragraph to expose its want of application to the use that is thus made of it. But to cut short this plea of indolence for delaying the painful work of surrendering all that is vicious in conduct; let me put it to your common sense whether a thief would not, and could not give up stealing for a week, if he had the reward of a fortune waiting him at the end of it; whether, upon the same reward, an evil speaker could not, for the same time, impose a restraint upon his lips, and the slothful servant become a most pains-taking and diligent worker, and the liar maintain an undeviating truth throughout all his con

does have, on many who are not warped by a misleading speculation, and it will make them stir up such strength as they possess, and give up, indeed, much of their actual misconduct. This effect it had in the days of John the Baptist. People, on his call, gave up their violence and their extortions, and the evil of many of their doings, and were thus put into what God in his wisdom counted a fit state of preparation for the Saviour. If there was any thing in the revelation of the Gospel calculated to supersede this call of, "Cease you from the evil of your doings," then I could understand the indifference, or the positive hos tility of zealous pretenders to the work of addressing practical exhortation to inquirers at the very outset of their progress. But so far from being superseded by any thing that the Gospel lays before us, the Author, and the first preachers of the Gospel, just took up the lesson of John, and at the very commencement of their ministry did they urge it upon people to turn them from the evil of their doings. Repent and believe the Gospel, says our Saviour. Repent and turn unto God, and do works meet for repentance, says the apostle Paul. And there must be something wrong, my brethren, iî you resist me urging it upon you, to give up at this moment, even though it should be the first moment of your concern about salvation, to give up all that is obviously wrong; to turn you to all that is obviously right; to grapple with every sin you can lay your hand upon; and if it be true, in point of experience and common sense, that many a misdeed may be put away from you on the allurement of some temporal reward; then if you have faith in the reality of eternal things, the hope of an escape from the coming wrath may and will tell immediately upon you, and we shall see among you a stir, and a diligence, and a doing, and a visible reformation.

It is a great matter to chase away all mys ticism from the path by which a sinner is led unto God; and it is to be lamented that many a speculation of many a respected divine, has the effect of throwing a darkening cloud of perplexity over the very entrance of this path. I tell you a very plain thing, and, if it be true, it is surely of importance that you should know it, when I tell you. that if you are a servant, and are visited with a desire after salvation, then a faithful performance of your daily task is a step