command of the apostle's in its general sense, and avoid
exploring, so to speak, all the wisdom contained within it. Certain
actions of our lives, our religious services, the more solemn
transactions in which we are engaged, we are willing to do in Christ's
name; but that multitude of common words and ordinary actions by which
more than sixty-nine out of our seventy years are filled, we take away
from our Lord's dominion, under the foolish, and hypocritical pretence
that they are too trifling and too familiar to be mixed up with the
thought of things so solemn.

This is one fault, and by far the most common. We make Christ's service
the business only of a very small portion of our lives; we hallow only
a very small part of our words and actions by doing them in his name.
Unlike our Lord's own parable, where he compares Christianity to leaven
hidden in the three measures of meal till the whole was leavened, the
practice rather has been to keep the leaven confined to one little
corner of the mass of meal; to take care that it should not spread so as
to leaven the whole mass; to keep our hearts still in the state of the
world when Christ visited it--"the light shineth in darkness, and the
darkness comprehended it not;" that is, it did not take the light into
itself so as to be wholly enlightened: the light shone, and there was a
bright space immediately around it; but beyond there was a blackness of
darkness into which it vainly strove to penetrate.

On the other hand there has been, though, more rarely, a fault of the
opposite sort. Men have said that they were in all their actions of
ordinary life doing Christ's will, that they endeavoured always to be
promoting some good object; and that the peculiar services of religion,
as they are called, were useless, inasmuch as in spirit they are
worshipping God always. This is a great error; because, as a matter of
fact, it is false. We may safely say that no man ever did keep his heart
right with God in his ordinary life, that no one ever became one with
Christ, and Christ with him, without seeking Christ where he reveals
himself, it may not be more really, but to our weakness far more
sensibly, than in the common business of daily life. We may be happy if
we can find Christ there, after we have long sought him and found him in
the way of his own ordinances, in prayer, and in his holy communion.
Even Christ himself, when on earth, though his whole day was undeniably
spent in d