, of all the benevolent and generous
affections; which, by the gracious ordination of our Creator, while
they disinterestedly intend only happiness to others, are most surely
productive to ourselves of complacency and peace. O! little do they know
of the true measure of enjoyment, who can compare these delightful
complacencies with the frivolous pleasures of dissipation, or the coarse
gratifications of sensuality. It is no wonder, however, that the nominal
Christian should reluctantly give up, one by one, the pleasures of the
world; and look back upon them, when relinquished, with eyes of
wistfulness and regret: because he knows not the sweetness of the
delights with which true Christianity repays those trifling sacrifices,
and is greatly unacquainted with the _nature_ of that pleasantness which
is to be found in the ways of Religion.

It is indeed true, that when any one, who has long been going on in the
gross and unrestrained practice of vice, is checked in his career, and
enters at first on a religious course, he has much to undergo. Fear,
guilt, remorse, shame, and various other passions, struggle and conflict
within him. His appetites are clamorous for their accustomed
gratification, and inveterate habits are scarcely to be denied. He is
weighed down by a load of guilt, and almost overwhelmed by the sense of
his unworthiness. But all this ought in fairness to be charged to the
account of his past sins, and not to that of his present repentance. It
rarely happens, however, that this state of suffering continues very
long. When the mental gloom is the blackest, a ray of heavenly light
occasionally breaks in, and suggests the hope of better days. Even in
this life it commonly holds true, "They that sow in tears shall reap in
joy."

Neither, when we maintain, that the ways of Religion are ways of
pleasantness, do we mean to deny that the Christian's internal state is,
through the whole of his life, a state of discipline and warfare.
Several of the causes which contribute to render it such have been
already pointed out, together with the workings of his mind in relation
to them: but if he has solicitudes and griefs peculiar to himself, he
has "joys also with which a stranger intermeddles not."

"Drink deep," however, "or taste not," is a direction full as applicable
to Religion, if we would find it a source of pleasure, as it is to
knowledge. A little Religion is, it must be confessed, apt to make men
gloomy, as a l