how can we fulfil our office for the benefit of others, or how can we answer to our proper character as true believers, if there be not a savour of divine grace abiding in us, and diffused around us ? In all our intercourse with God, we must exercise a spirituality of mind : for what is prayer without devotion ? or what is praise without fervent love and adoring gratitude ? In truth, what are any services whatever, if sin be unmortified, and corruption unsubdued? " If we retain any iniquity in our hearts, the Lord will not hear us1." " The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord : it is the prayer of the upright only that is his delightV The same may be said of all our intercourse with men. God's direction to us is, " Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt1." It is not necessary that we be always conversing about religion : but it is necessary that there always be found in us a religious frame of mind, and that not a word escape from our lips that is inconsistent with it. " As sons of God, we must be blameless and harmless, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, shining among them as lights in the world1" :" and if we attain not to this character, " all the labour that has been bestowed upon us will be in vainV
But, that we may come more directly to the point which our Lord had chiefly in view, I add,]
2. Have peace one with another —
[Love ought to be the one habit of the Christian's mind, and the very element in which he moves. It is a shame to him to betray ambitious, envious, contentious dispositions ; or to value his brother less on account of some minor differences, when he is evidently, in his own sphere, doing the Lord's work. These, and such like dispositions, are the fruitful sources of con- tention and hatred ; as St. James has said : " From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts which war in your members ° ?" Now the Christian world need exceedingly to be instructed on this point. All will admit that they need to " have salt in themselves ;" whilst yet they imagine that that will consist with bigotry and contention. But I must say to all such characters, " If ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above ; but is earthly, sensual, devilish p." If we would approve our- selves upright before God, we must " walk worthy the vocation wherewith we are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavouring
1 Ps. lxvi. 18. k Prov, xv. 8. I Col. iv. 6.
«» Phil. ii. 15. n phil. ii. 16. o jam> iv, L
p Jam. iii. 14, 15.