his they do under the idea that at length a
convenient season will come when they may give themselves to religious
duties. They determine on retiring at length from the world, and of
making up for lost time by greater diligence then. All such persons,
and how many they are! think that they will be able to seek Christ when
they please, though they have lived all their lives with no true love
either of God or man; i. e. they do not, in their hearts, believe our
Lord's doctrine contained in the text, that to obey God is to be near
Christ, and that to disobey is to be far from Him.

How will this truth be plain to us in that day when the secrets of all
hearts shall be revealed! _Now_ we do not believe that strict
obedience is as necessary as it is. I say we do _not_ believe it,
though we say we do. No one, of course, believes it in its fulness,
but most of us are deceived by words, and say we accept and believe,
when we hardly do more than profess it. We say, indeed, that obedience
is absolutely necessary, and are surprised to have our real belief in
what we say questioned; but we do not give the truth that place in the
scheme of our religion which this profession requires, and thus we
cheat our consciences. We put something _before_ it, in our doctrinal
system, as _more_ necessary than it, one man puts faith, another
outward devotion, a third attention to his temporal calling, another
zeal for the Church; that is, we put a part for the whole of our duty,
and so run the risk of losing our souls. These are the burnt-offerings
and sacrifices which even the scribe put aside before the weightier
matters of the Law. Or again, we fancy that the means of gaining
heaven are something stranger and rarer than the mere obvious duty of
obedience to God; we are loth to seek Christ in the waters of Jordan
rather than in Pharpar and Abana, rivers of Damascus; we prefer to seek
Him in the height above, or to descend into the deep, rather than to
believe that the word is nigh us, even in our mouth and in our
heart[35]. Hence, in false religions some men have even tortured
themselves and been cruel to their flesh, thereby to become as gods,
and to mount aloft; and in our own, with a not less melancholy, though
less self-denying, error, men fancy that certain strange effects on
their minds--strong emotion, restlessness, and an unmanly excitement
and extravagance of thought and feeling--are the tokens of that
inscrutable Spirit, who