old of its words to the neglect or
actual violation of its spirit and real meaning. This is a great and a
very common mischief, but yet there is a truth at the bottom of the
error; it is true, that the greatest questions relating to God and to
ourselves, may find their answer in the Scriptures; it is true, that if
we search for this answer wisely we may surely find it.

Consider the words of the text, and see how easily they may be
perverted, if with no more ado we take them, as said of ourselves, each
individually, and as containing to each of us a statement positive of
truth. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
If we believe that this is God's word respecting each of us, what
violence must we do to our memory of the past, and our consciousness of
the present, if we do try to persuade ourselves that so total a change
has taken place in each of us, that what we once were, we are no longer;
that what we are, we once were not; and this not in some few particular
points, but in the main character of our minds. Again, "All things are
of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." If we apply
these words to each of us, what exceeding presumption would they breed!
If all things in us and about us are now of God, what room can there be
for sin? If God hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, what room
can there be for fear or for danger? And thus, while we say we are
quoting and believing the word of God, we do in fact turn it into a lie;
we make it assert a falsehood as to our past state, and a falsehood as
to our future state; we make it say, that our old nature is passed away,
when it is not; that we have got a new nature when we have not; that we
are reconciled to God, and therefore in safety, when we are, in fact, in
the extremest danger.

But it is easy to see that we have no right to apply to ourselves words
written by St. Paul eighteen hundred years ago, and applied by him to
other persons. I go, then, farther; and I say, that if every member of
the church of Corinth, to which they were written, had applied them to
himself in the manner which I have shown above, the words would in many
instances have been perverted no less, and would have been made to state
what was false, and not what was true. And the same may be said of many
other passages of St. Paul's Epistles, which, having been similarly
misinterpreted, have furnished matter for endless controversies, and on
which