which prevent them from doing what is right, prevent them from doing
what they know to be the will of God. They talk as if God was somehow
responsible for those hindrances, when, in fact, their own wrong-doing
has caused them.

For instance, some of you know perfectly well that you ought to be
Christians, avowed Christians, that you ought to take the Lord's side
in the great battle of life; you know that you ought to be His
servants, followers, and soldiers; you know that that is your duty, you
cannot help knowing it and admitting it, unless you reject the Bible
altogether, and deny the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ. You have known
from childhood that Christ has claims upon you, and that to live the
Christian life is your solemn obligation. It is more than probable
that you told your mother, your teachers, and yourselves long ago, and
perhaps many a time over, that you fully intended to give your lives
and hearts to Christ's service. But you have not done it yet, and the
reason is that there are certain self-made difficulties which hold you
back. God has not put them in the way--you have built them up
yourselves. I hear young men and women say, in the very tone of this
perplexed king. But what shall we do for the hundred talents? If we
take up religion, how shall we bear the loss which it involves? How
are we to get on without those pleasures, self-indulgences, and
dearly-loved habits which Christ's service would cut us off from? How
are we to abandon those very pleasant, but not very inspiring and pure,
companionships, with and among which we spend most of our leisure time?
How are we to resign all our free and easy and thoughtless ways, our
loose talk, our vain and sinful imaginations?

These are your difficulties, are they? But who made them for you?
Heaven did not send them. I am not sure, even, that the devil was the
author of them. You made every one of them yourselves. It was your
own weak yielding that formed those habits so dear to you. It was
because you preferred your own way to God's that you took to pleasures
and self-indulgences which were wrong in His sight. It was your own
choice that sought out and formed friendships and companionships of the
ungodly sort. If you have any joys, delights, and associations which
Christ would compel you to resign, they are only such as you ought
never to have entered upon. They are self-made difficulties which
ought never to have been made; and now, wit