inaction.
Even the indifferent and supine soul expects to rouse itself up at some
future time, and work out its salvation. The most thoughtless and
inactive man, in religious respects, will acknowledge that
thoughtlessness and inactivity if continued will end in perdition.
But he intends at a future day to think, and act, and be saved. So
natural is it, to every man, to believe in salvation by works; so ready
is every one to concede that heaven is reached, and hell is escaped, only
by an earnest effort of some kind; so natural is it to every man to ask
with these Jews, "What shall we _do_, that we may work the works of God?"

But mankind generally, like the Jews in the days of our Lord, are under a
delusion respecting the _nature_ of the work which must be performed in
order to salvation. And in order to understand this delusion, we must
first examine the common notion upon the subject.

When a man begins to think of God, and of his own relations to Him, he
finds that he owes Him service and obedience. He has a work to perform,
as a subject of the Divine government; and this work is to obey the
Divine law. He finds himself obligated to love God with all his heart,
and his neighbor as himself, and to discharge all the duties that spring
out of his relations to God and man. He perceives that this is the "work"
given him to do by creation, and that if he does it he will attain the
true end of his existence, and be happy in time and eternity. When
therefore he begins to think of a religious life, his first spontaneous
impulse is to begin the performance of this work which he has hitherto
neglected, and to reinstate himself in the Divine favor by the ordinary
method of keeping the law of God. He perceives that this is the mode in
which the angels preserve themselves holy and happy; that this is the
original mode appointed by God, when He established the covenant of
works; and he does not see why it is not the method for him. The law
expressly affirms that the man that doeth these things shall live by
them; he proposes to take the law just as it reads, and just as it
stands,--to do the deeds of the law, to perform the works which it
enjoins, and to live by the service. This we say, is the common notion,
natural to man, of the species of work which must be performed in order
to eternal life. This was the idea which filled the mind of the Jews when
they put the question of the text, and received for answer from Christ,
"This i