that they should continue any longer in such fatal security. Hear, every one of you, the command of God : "Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep ; let your laughter be turned into mourn- ing, and your joy into heaviness: humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you upq." This, this is the great business of life : in comparison of this, every pursuit is light and vain. " To flee from the wrath to come, and to lay hold on eternal life !" O who can paint in sufficiently glowing colours the importance and excellency of such an employment ?
Some may perhaps reply, that they cannot do these things. True, we cannot of ourselves ; but will not God enable us to do them, if we seek the aid of his Holy Spirit ? Has he not expressly told us, that his "grace shall be sufficient for us?" I say then, " Plough up your fallow ground ;" " make you a new heart, and a new spirit :" and when you find your own insufficiency, then plead with God the promises he has made, and cry, " Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within mer !" That prayer, if offered in faith, shall surely be answered; and you shall find to your joy, that you " can do all things through Christ who strengthened! you."]
2. Those who make a profession of religion —
[Do not imagine that it is sufficient to break up the fallow ground once : the husbandman ploughs his ground often, espe- cially if it be a soil that is full of noxious plants. Thus then must you do : there is no soil so bad as the heart of a carnal man : weeds are growing up continually : and it must be the labour of your life to pluck them up. How many professors of religion have the good seed choked and rendered unfruitful, through their negligence in pulling up the thorns and briers that grow up with its ! It is an awful truth, that no people are farther from the kingdom of God than they ; because they are of all persons the most difficult to be brought to a sense of their danger. But St. Paul marks in very striking terms the difference between such persons and the true Christian : against those he cautions us, " Beware of dogs, beware of the concision: we are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh*." A pro- fession of religion, however clear your knowledge of the Gospel may be, will not suffice : for " he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh : but he is a Jew who is one inwardly ; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of Godu."]
i Jam. iv. 9, 10.
r Compare the command, Ezek. xviif 31. with the promise, Ezek. xxxvi. 26. and the petition, Ps. li. 10.
s Matt. xiii. 7, 22. * Phil. iii. 2, 3 u Rom. ii. 25—29.