ondition indispensably require.
We have every one of us a work to accomplish, wherein our eternal
interests are at stake; a work to which we are naturally indisposed. We
live in a world abounding with objects which distract our attention and
divert our endeavours; and a deadly enemy is ever at hand to seduce and
beguile us. If we persevere indeed, success is certain; but our efforts
must know no remission. There is a call on us for vigorous and continual
resolution, self-denial, and activity. Now, man is not a being of mere
intellect.

Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor,

is a complaint which, alas! we all of us might daily utter. The
slightest solicitation of appetite is often able to draw us to act in
opposition to our clearest judgment, our highest interests, and most
resolute determinations. Sickness, poverty, disgrace, and even eternal
misery itself, sometimes in vain solicit our regards; they are all
excluded from the view, and thrust as it were beyond the sphere of
vision, by some poor unsubstantial transient object, so minute and
contemptible as almost to escape the notice of the eye of reason.

These observations are more strikingly confirmed in our religious
concerns than in any other; because in them the interests at stake are
of transcendant importance: but they hold equally in every instance
according to its measure, wherein there is a call for laborious,
painful, and continued exertions, from which any one is likely to be
deterred by obstacles, or seduced by the solicitations of pleasure. What
then it to be done in the case of any such arduous and necessary
undertaking? The answer is obvious--You should endeavour not only to
convince the understanding, but also to affect the heart; and for this
end, you must secure the reinforcement of the passions. This is indeed
the course which would be naturally followed by every man of common
understanding, who should know that some one for whom he was deeply
interested, a child, for instance, or a brother, were about to enter on
a long, difficult, perilous, and critical adventure, wherein success was
to be honour and affluence; defeat was to be contempt and ruin. And
still more, if the parent were convinced that his child possessed
faculties which, strenuously and unremittingly exerted, would prove
equal to all the exigences of the enterprize, but knew him also to be
volatile and inconstant, and had reason to doubt his resolution and his
vigilance; how w