even any ordinary undertaking with the most difficult part of it, instead of following the usual method of proceeding from the lower to the higher. If a language was to be learnt, she began with a very difficult author. If a scheme of economy was to be improved, she relinquished at once some prominent indulgence; if a vanity was to be cut off, she fixed on some strong act of self-denial which should appear a little disreputable to others, while it somewhat mortified herself. These incipient trials once got over, she had a large reward in finding all lesser ones in the same class comparatively light. The main victory was gained in the onset, the subsequent skirmishes cost little. If it be said that the effort is too violent, the change too sudden, we apprehend the assertion is a mistake. When we have worked up our selves, or rather are worked up by a superior agency to a strong measure, it becomes a point of honour, as well as of duty, to persist; we are ashamed of stopping and especially of retreating, though we have no witness but God and our own hearts. Having once persevered, the victory is the reward. A slower change, though desirable, has less stimulus, less animation, is less sensibly marked; we cannot recur, as in the other case, to the hour of conquest, nor have we so clear a consciousness of having obtain ed it. be great in proportion to the pertinacity. For who can conceive a more miserable state, than for a man to be goaded on by a long perseverance in habits, which both his conscience and his understanding condemn? Even if upon conviction he renounces them, he has a long time to spend in backing, with the mortification at last, to find himself only where he ought to have been at setting out. Without insisting on the difficulty of totally subduing long-indulged habits of any gross vice, such as intemperance; we may remark, that it requires a long and painful process-and this even after a man is convinced of its turpitude, after he discovers evident marks of improvement-to conquer the habits of any fault, which, though not so scandalous in the eyes of the world, may be equally inconsistent with real piety.-Take the love of money for instance. How reluctantly, if at all, is covetousness extir. pated from the heart, where it has long been rooted! The imperfect convert has a conviction on his mind, nay he has a feeling in his heart, that there is no such thing as being a Christian without liberality. This he adopts, in common with other just sentiments, and speaks of it as a necessary evidence of sincerity. He has got the whole christian theory by heart, and such parts of it as do not trench upon this long-indulged corruption, he more or less brings into action. But in this tender point, though the profession is cheap, the practice is costly. An occasion is brought home to him, of exercising the grace he has been commending. He acknowledges its force, he does more; he feels it. If taken at the moment, something considerable might be done; but if any delay intervene, that delay is fatal; for from feeling, he begins to calculate. Now there is a cooling property in calculation, which But the conquest we have won we must maintain. The fruits of the initiatory victory may be lost, if vigilance does not guard that which valour subdued. If the relinquishment of evil habits is so difficult, it is not less necessary to be watchful, lest we should insensibly slide into the negligence of such as are good. What we neglect, we gradually forget. This guard against declension is the more requisite, as the human mind is so limited, that one object quickly ex-freezes the warm current that sensibility had pels another. A new idea takes possession as set in motion. The old habit is too powerful for soon as its predecessor is driven out; and the the young convert, yet he flatters himself that very traces of former habits are effaced, not sud- he has at once exercised charity and discretion. denly, but progressively; no two successive He takes comfort both from the liberal feeling ideas being, perhaps, very dissimilar, while the which had resolved to give the money, and the last in the train will be of a character quite difprudence which had saved it, laying to his heart ferent, not from that which immediately pre- the flattering unction, that he has only spared it ceded, but from that which first began to draw for some more pressing demand, which, when it us off from the right habits; the impression con-occurs, will again set him on feeling, and calcutinues to grow fainter, till that which at first lating, and saving. was weakened, is at length obliterated. If we do not establish the habit of the great statesman of Holland, to do only one thing at a time, we shall do nothing well; the whole of our understanding, however highly we may rate it, is not too much to give to any subject which is of sufficient importance to require an investigation at all; certainly is not great enough to afford being split into as many parts, as we may choose to take subjects simultaneously in hand. If we allow the different topics which require deliberation to break in on each other; if a second is admitted to a conference, before we had dismissed the first, as neither will be distinctly considered, so neither is likely to obtain a just decision. These desultory pursuits obstruct the establishment of correct habits. But it requires the firm union of a sound principle with an impartial judgment to ascertain that the habit is really good, or the mischief will Some well-meaning persons unintentionally confirm this kind of error. They are so zealous on the subject of sudden conversion, that they are too ready to pronounce, from certain warm expressions, that this change has taken place in their acquaintance, while evident symptoms of an unchanged nature continue to disfigure the character. They do not always wait till an alteration in the habits has given that best evidence of an interior alteration. They dwell so exclusively on miraculous changes, that they leave little to do for the convert, but to consider himself as an inactive recipient of grace; not as one who is to exhibit, by the change in his life, that mutation, which the divine Spirit has produced on his heart. This too common error appears to arise, not only from enthusiasm, but partly from want of insight into the human character, of which habits are the ground-work, and in which right habits are not less the effect of grace for being gradually produced. We cannot, indeed, purify ourselves, any more than we can convert ourselves, it being equally the work of the Holy Spirit to infuse purity, as well as the other graces, into the heart; but it rests with us to exercise this grace, to reduce this purity to a habit, else the Scriptures would not have been so abundant in injunctions to this duty. who have never been guilty of his irregularities in conduct, who have never indulged his disorders of heart and mind. When we see holy men, to whom this cheerful confidence is sometimes denied, or from whom, in the agonies of dissolving nature, it is withdrawn, shall they whose case we have been considering, complain, if their's are not all halcyon days, if their closing hour is rather contrite than triumphant? But this, if it be not a state of joy, may be equally a state of safety. 'We must hate sin,' says bishop Jeremy Taylor, in all its dimensions, in all its distances, and in every angle of its reception.' St. Paul felt this scrupulousness of Christian delicacy to The duty of keeping up this sense of purity is such an extent, that, in intimating the commis. of great extent. One of the many uses of prayer sion of certain enormities to the church of Ephe. is, that, by the habit of breathing out our inmost sus, he charged that they should not be so much thoughts of God, the sense of his being, the conas named among them. This great master in sciousness of his presence, the idea that his pure the science of human nature, a knowledge per- eye is immediately upon us, imparts a temporary fected by grace, was aware that the very men- purity to the soul, which it vainly aims to maintion of some sins might be a temptation to com-tain in an equal degree in its intercourse with mit them; he would not have the mind intimate mankind. The beatitude of the promised vision with the expression, nor the tongue familiar with of God is more immediately annexed to this the sound. He who knew all the minuter en-grace; and it is elsewhere said, 'that every one trances, as well as the broader avenues to the corrupt heart of man, knew how much safer it is to avoid than to combat, how much easier the retreat than victory. He was aware, that purity of heart and thought, could alone produce purity of life and conduct. From the unhappy want of this early habit of restraint, many, who are become sincerely pious, find it very difficult to extricate their minds from certain associations established by former habits. Corrupt books and evil communications have at once left a sense of abhorrence on their hearts, with an indelible impression on their memory. They find it almost impossible to get rid of sallies of imagination, which, though they once admired as wit, they now consider as little less than blasphemy. The will rejects them; but they cling to the recollection with fatal pertinacity. Vices, not only of the conduct, but of the imagination, long indulged, leave a train of almost inextinguishable corruptions behind them. These are evils of which even the reformed heart does not easily get clear. He who repents suddenly, will too often be purified slowly. A corrupt practice may be abolished, but a soiled imagination is not easily cleansed. We repeat, that these rooted habits, even after the act has been long hated and discontinued, may persist in tormenting him who has long repented of the sin, so as to keep him to the last in a painful and distressing doubt as to his real state; but if this doubt continue to make him more vigilant, and to keep alive his humility, the uneasiness it causes may be more salutary than a greater confidence of his own condition. Many have complained, after years of sincere reformation, that they did not possess that peace and consolation which religion promises; not suspecting, that their long adherence to wrong habits may naturally darken their views and cloud their enjoyments. Surely the man whose mind has abandoned itself for years to improper indulgences has little right to complain, if bit. terness accompany his repentance, if dejection break in on his peace. Surely he has little right to murmur, if those consolations are refused to him, which, in the inscrutable wisdom of Providence, are sometimes withheld from good men, VOL. II. 16* who hath this hope, purifieth himself, as He is pure.' The holy felicity of the creature is thus made to depend on its assimilation with the Creator. There is a beautiful intimation of the purity of God in the order of construction in the prayer taught by our Saviour. We pray that his name may be hallowed, that is, that our hearts, and the hearts of all men, may honour his holy name; may be deeply impressed with a sense of his purity and holiness, before we proceed to the subsequent petitions. We thus invest our minds with this preparatory sentiment in order to sanctify what we are about to implore. In addition to the necessity of stated prayer for the promotion of purity, it may be observed, that if, by habitual devotion, we bend our thoughts into that course, they will in time almost voluntarily pursue it. The good effect of prayer will, on our return to society, be much increased by the practice of occasionally darting up to heaven, a short ejaculation, a laudatory sentence, or some brief spontaneous effusion. This will assist to stir up the flame which was kindled by the morning sacrifice, and preserve it from total extinction before that of the evening is offered up. We may learn from the profane practice of some, that an ejaculation takes as little time, and obtrudes less on notice, than an oath or an exclamation. It implores in as few words, the same divine power for a blessing, whom the other obtests for destruction. One great benefit of science is allowed to be derived from its habituating the mind to shake off its dependance upon sense. Devout medita. tion, in like manner, accustoms it not to fly for support to sensible and material things, but to rest in such as are intellectual and spiritual. By a general neglect of serious thinking, virtue is sometimes withered and decayed; in minds where it is not torn up by the roots, there remains in them that vital sap which may still, upon habitual cultivation, not only vegetate, but produce fruit. One great obstacle to habitual meditation must not be passed over. It is the pernicious custom of submitting to the uncontrolled dominion of a roving imagination. This prolific faculty produces such a constant budding of A a images, fancies, visions, conjectures, and conceits, that she can subsist plentifully on her own independent stock. She is perpetually wander. ing from the point to which she promised to confine herself when she set out; is ever roaming from the spot to which her powerless possessor had threatened to pin her down. We retire with a resolution to reflect: Reason has no sooner marshalled her forces, than this undisciplined run away escapes from duty, one straggler after another joins the enemy, or brings home some foreign impertinence. While we meant to indulge only a harmless reflection, we are brought under subjection to a whole series of reveries of different characters and opposite descriptions. Fresh trains obliterate our first speculations, till the spirit sinks into a sort of deliquium. We have nothing for it, but resolutely to resist the enfeebling despot. Let us stir up some counteracting force: let us fly to some active employment which shall break the charm, and dissolve the pleasant thraldom. No matter what, so it be innocent and opposite. We shall not cure ourselves by the sturdiest resolution not to do this thing which is complained of, unless we compel ourselves to do something else. Courageous exertion is the only conqueror of irresolution: vigorous action the only supplanter of idle speculation. Habits are not arbitrary systems and predetermined schemes. They are not always laid down deliberately as plans to be pursued, but steal upon us insensibly; insinuate themselves into a train of successive repetitions, till we find ourselves in bondage to them, before we are aware they have gotten any fast hold over us. But if rooted bad habits are of such difficult extirpation, that, as we have already observed, they not only destroy the peace of him who continues them, but embitter the very penitence of him who has forsaken them, there is a class of beings in whom they are not yet inveterate. If I could speak with the tongues of men and of angels, never could they be employed to a more important purpose, than in representing to my youthful readers the blessed. ness of avoiding such habits now, as may take a whole life to unlearn. the older and the wiser do not, because they cannot, commonly emancipate themselves. But, supposing a young man is so happy as to escape the grosser corruptions, yet, if he have a turn to wit and ridicule, he should be singularly on his guard against the false credit which ludicrous associations will obtain for him in certain societies. An indelicate but pointed jest, a combination of some light thought with some scriptural expression, a parody which makes a serious thing ridiculous, or a sober one absurd, these are instruments by no means harmless, not only to him who handles them, but also in the hands of subalterns and copyists, who having, perhaps, no faculty but memory and seldom using memory but for mischief, retain with joy, and circulate from vanity, what was at first uttered with mere random thoughtlessness. Profane dunces are the busy echoes of the loose wit of others. With little talent for original mischief, but devoting that little to the worst purposes, they pick up a kind of lite rary livelihood on the stray sarcasms and fugitive bon mots of others, and are maintained on what the witty throw away. If even in the first instance there were nothing wrong in the thing itself, there is mischief in the connexion. Whatever serves to append a light thought to a serious one, is unsafe: both have, by frequent citation, been so accustomed to appear together, that when, in a better frame of mind, the good one is called up, the corrupt associate never fails to present itself unbidden, and, like Pharaoh's blasted corn, devours the wholesome ear. 'Man,' says one of the most sagacious ob servers of man, Dr. Paley, 'is a bundle of habits.' The more we attend to them, the more distinctly we shall perceive those which are right, and the more dexterity we shall acquire in establishing them. In setting out in our moral course, we can make little progress, unless we suffer ourselves to be governed by certain rules; but when the rules are once worked into habits, they in a manner govern us. We lose the sense of that restraining power, which was at first unpleasant though self-imposed. To illustrate this by an instance ;-The accomplished orator is not fettered by recurring to the laws of the grammarian, nor the canons of the dialectician, though it was by being habitually trained in their respestive schools, that he acquired both his accuracy and argument. Yet, while he is speaking, it never occurs to him, that there are such things in the world as grammar or logic. The rules are become habits, they have answered their end, and are dismissed. O you to whom opening life is fresh, and gay, and tempting! you who have yet your path to choose, whose hearts are ingenuous, and whose manners amiable, in whom, if wrong propensities discover themselves, yet evil habits are not substantially formed-could you be made sensible, at a less costly price than your own experience, that though through the mercy of God, the long-erring heart may hereafter be If we cousider the force of habit on amusebrought to abhor its own sin, yet the once ini-ments: stated diversions enslave us more by tiated mind can never be made to unknow its knowledge, nor to unthink its thoughts; can never be brought to separate those combinations which it once too fondly cherished :-how much future regret, how much incurable sorrow might you spare yourselves! If you would but reflect that though in respect of the past, you may become inwardly penitent, you cannot become as you now are, outwardly innocent, and that no repentance can restore your present happy ignorance of practised evil,-you would then keep clear of a bondage from which you perceive the custom of making us feel the want of them, than by any positive pleasure they afford. By being incessantly pursued, they diminish in their power of delighting; yet such is the plastic power of habit and such the yielding substance of our minds, that they become arbitrary wants, absolute articles, not of luxury, but necessity. Strange that what is enjoyed without pleasure cannot be discontinued without pain! The very hour when, the place where, the sight of those with whom they have been partaken, present associations which we feel a kind of difficulty This is not all the changes effected in us. Candid Christians, however, who know experimentally the power of habit, who are aware of the remainders of evil in the best men, will not rashly pronounce that he, who, while he is struggling with some long cherished corruption falls into an occasional abberation from the path he is endeavouring to follow, is therefore not religious. and uneasiness in separating. We are partly cheated into this imaginary necessity, by seeing the eagerness with which others pursue them. Yet if it were not an artificial necessity, a want not arising from the constitution of our nature, those would be unhappy who are deprived of them, or rather, who never enjoyed them. There is a respectable society of Christians among us who carry the restriction of diversions to the widest extent. Yet among the number of amiable, virtuous, and well instructed young Quakers, whom I have known, I have always found them as cheerful and as happy as other people. Their cheerfulness was perhaps If our bad habits have arisen from dangerous more intellectual than mirthful; but their hap-associations, we must dissolve the intercourse, piness never appeared to be impeded by com- if we would obviate the danger. Good impresplaints at the privation of pleasures to which sions may have been made on the heart, yet the habit had not enslaved them-a habit which, indulged thought, and especially the allowed when carried too far, destroys the very end of sight of that object which once melted down our pleasure, that of invigorating the mind by re- better resolutions, may melt them again. If we laxing it. would conquer an invading enemy, we must not only fight him in the field, but cut off his provisions. It may be difficult, but nothing should repel the effort but what is impossible. Now in this there is no impossibility, because the thing not being placed out of our reach, there needs only the concurrence of the will. If we humour this wayward will, it is at our peril. What we persist in indulging, we shall every day find more difficult to restrain. Perhaps on our not resisting the very next tempta tion, will depend the future colour of our lifethe very possibility of future resistance. That which is now in our power, may, by repeated rejection, be judicially placed beyond it. Infirmity of purpose produces perpetual relapses. Temptation strengthens as resistance weakens. We create, by criminal indulgences, an imbecility in the will, and then plead the weakness, not which we found, but made.-Half measures produce more pain and no success. They are and fear, of indulgence and remorse. While we are balancing, conditioning, temporizing, negotiating with conscience, we might be singing Te Deum for the victory. It is a proof that the Apostle considered conversion in general a gradual transformation, when he spoke of the renewing of the inward man day by day; this seems to intimate that good habits, under the influence of the Spirit of Ged, are continually advancing the growth of the Christian, and conducting him to that maturity which is his consummation and reward. The grace of repentance, like every other, must be established by habit. Repent. ance is not completed by a single act, it must be incorporated into our mind, till it become a fixed state, arising from a continual sense of our need of it.-Forgive us our trespasses would never have been enjoined as a daily petition, if daily repentance had not been necessary for daily sins. The grand work of repentance, indeed, accompanies the change of heart; but that which is purified will not, in this state of imperfection necessarily remain purc.-While we are liable to sin, we must be habitually peni-compounded of desire and regret, of appetite tent. What force we take from the will by every repetition, we give to the habit. A faint endeavour ends in a sure defeat. Temptation becoming more importunate, if its incursions are not resisted, if its attacks are not repelled, the habit will get final possession of the mind; encouragement will invite repetition; where it has been once entertained, it will find a ready way; where it has been received with familiarity, expulsion will soon become difficult, and afterwards impossible. The Holy Spirit, whose aid perhaps we have faintly invoked, and firmly rejected, is withdrawn. But if we are sincere in the invocation, we shall be firm in the resis tance; if we are fervent in the resolution, we shall be triumphant in the conflict. A man may give evidence of his possess ing many amiable qualities, without our being able to say, therefore, he is a good man. His virtues may be constitutional, their motives may be worldly. But when he exhibits clear and convincing evidence, that he has subdued all his inveterate bad habits, weeded out rooted evil propensities; when the miser is grown largely liberal, the passionate become meek, the calumniator charitable, the malignant kind; when every bad habit is not only eradicated, but succeeded by its opposite quality, we would conclude that such a change could only be ef. fected by power from on high, we would not scruple to call that man religious. But, above all, there must be a change wrought in the secret course of our thoughts; without this interior improvement, the abandonment of any wrong practice is no proof of an effectual alteration. This, indeed, we cannot make a rule What we have insisted on is the more imporby which to judge others, but it is an infallible tant, because all progressive goodness consists one by which to judge ourselves. Certain faults in habits; and virtuous habits, begun and car. are the effects of certain temptations, rather than of that common depravity natural to all. But a general rectification of thought, a sensible revolution in the secret desires and imaginations of the heart, is perhaps the least equivocal of ried on here with increasing improvement and multiplied energies, are susceptible of eternal proficiency. When we are assured that the effect of habits will not cease with life, but be carried into eternity, it gives such an enlarge ment to the ideas, such an expansion to the soul, that it seems as if every hour were lost in which we are not beginning or improving some virtuous habit. moment, and going on in a careless inattention to the duties inculcated by an authority they recognize. The lives of the persons previously considered are commonly better than their profession, the lives of those now under contemplation are worse. These seem to have more faults, the other more prejudices. The others are satisfied to be stationary; these are not aware that they are retrograde. The former are in a far better state; but there is hope that the latter may find out that they are in a bad one. The one rest in their performances, with little doubt of their safety; the other, with a blind security, rest in the promises, without putting themselves in the way to profit by them. If the whole indivisible scheme of Christianity could be split into two portions, and either half were left to the option of these classes; those formerly noticed would adopt the command As we were originally made in the image of God, so shall we, by the renovation of our minds, of which our improved habits is the best test, be restored, in an enlargement of our moral powers, to a nearer resemblance of Him. Were it not that there is a participation, in all rational minds, of the same qualities in kind, though infinitely different in degree, the perfections of God would not so repeatedly be held out in Scripture as objects of our imitation. It would have been absurd to have said, 'as he that hath called you is holy, so be ye holy.' 'Be ye holy, for I am holy,' would not have been a reasonable command, unless holiness and purity had been one common moral quality of the nature, though unspeakably distant in the proportionments from an assurance of being saved by their between that perfect Being from whom whatever is good is derived, and the imperfect creature who derives it. Surely it is not too much to say, that though we can only attain that low measure, of which our weak and sinful nature is capable, yet still to aim at imitating those perfections, is a desire natural to the renewed heart and it may be considered as a symptom that no such renovation has taken place, when no such desire is felt. How could we attempt to trace the perfec. tions of the divine nature, if he had not stamped on our mind some idea of those perfections? We may bring these notions practically home to our own bosoms, possessing, as we do, not only natural ideas of the divine rectitude, but having these notions highly rectified, and confirmed by the Scripture representation of God; if, instead of adopting abstract reason for a rule of judging, which is often too unsubstantial for our grasp, we set ourselves to consider what such a perfect Being is likely to approve, or condemn, in human conduct, and then, comparing not only our deductions, but our practice, with the Gospel, adopt or reject what that approves or condemns. CHAP. XX. obeying them; these under present consideration, would choose the creed, from a notion that its mere adoption would go near to exonerate them from personal obedience. The others intend to earn heaven by their defective works: these, overlooking the necessity of holiness, flatter themselves, when they think at all, with the cheap salvation of a mental assent. We all desire to be finally saved. There is but one opinion about the end; we only differ about the mcans. Many fly to the merits of the Redeemer to obtain happiness for themselves hereafter, who do not desire his Spirit to govern their lives now, though he has so repeatedly declared, that he will not save us without renovating us. To suppose that we shall possess hereafter what we do not desire here, that we shall complete then, what we do not think of beginning now, is among the inconsistencies of many who pass muster under the generick title of Christians. The contest between heaven and earth seems to be reduced to one point, which shall possess the heart of man. The bent of our affections decides on the object of our pursuit. When they are rightly turned by his powerful hand, God has the predominance. It is the grand design of his word, of his Spirit, of all his dispensations, whether providential or spiritual, to restore us to himself, to recover the heart which sin has estranged from him. Where these instruments On the inconsistency of Christians with Chris- fail, the original bias governs, and the world tianity. We have, in three former chapters, ventured to address a class of Christians whose lives are decorous, and whose manners are amiable; but who, from the want of having imbibed the vital spirit of Christianity, and having, therefore, formed their principles on imperfect models, seem to have fallen short of that excellence of which their characters are susceptible. We presume now to address a very different class; persons acknowledging, indeed, the great truths of Christianity, but living either in the neglect of the principles they profess, or in practical opposition to the theory they maintain; yielding to the tyranny of passion or of pleasure, governed by the appetite or the caprice of the An inquiry why some good sort of people are not better. has the entire possession. Prospective prudence is esteemed a mark of wisdom by the world, and he who professed the wisdom which is from above, observes that the prudent man foreseeth.' Here the Bible and the world appear at first sight to be in strict accordance; but they differ materially, both as to the distance and the object of their forecast. How prudent do we reckon that man who denies himself present expenses, and waives present enjoyments, that he may more effectually secure to himself future fortune! We observe that his discreet self-denial will be amply rewarded by the increasing means of after indulgence. But if this very man were to extend his views still further, and look for the remuneration of his abstinence, not to a future day, but to a future life, he would not with his worldly friends, advance his character for wisdom. While he looks |