(5) In the last place, if you would know whether your religion is real, try it by your _feelings and habits about means of grace_. Prove it by the Sunday. Is that day a season of weariness and constraint, or a delight and a refreshment, and a sweet foretaste of the rest to come in heaven?--Prove it by the public means of grace. What are your feelings about public prayer and public praise, about the public preaching of God's Word, and the administration of the Lord's Supper? Are they things to which you give a cold assent, and tolerate them as proper and correct? Or, are they things in which you take pleasure, and without which you could not live happy?--Prove it, finally, by your feelings about private means of grace. Do you find it essential to your comfort to read the Bible regularly in private, and to speak to God in prayer? Or, do you find these practices irksome, and either slur them over, or neglect them altogether? These questions deserve your attention. If means of grace, whether public or private, are not as necessary to your soul as meat and drink are to your body, you may well doubt whether your religion is "_real_."
I press on the attention of all my readers the five points which I have just named. There is nothing like coming to particulars about these matters. If you would know whether your religion is "real," genuine, and true, measure it by the five particulars which I have now named. Measure it fairly: test it honestly. If your heart is right in the sight of God, you have no cause to flinch from examination. If it is wrong, the sooner you find it out the better.
And now I have done what I proposed to do. I have shown from Scripture the unspeakable importance of reality in religion, and the danger in which many stand of being lost for ever, for want of it. I have given five plain tests, by which a man may find out whether his Christianity is real. I will conclude all by a direct application of the whole subject to the souls of all who read this paper. I will draw my bow at a venture, and trust that God will bring an arrow home to the hearts and consciences of many.
(1) My first word of application shall be _an inquiry_. Is your own religion real or unreal? genuine or base? I do not ask what you think about others. Perhaps you may see many hypocrites around you. You may be able to point to many who have no "reality" at all. This is not the question. You may be right in your opinion about others. But I want to know about yourself. Is your own Christianity real and true? or nominal and base?
If you love life, do not turn away from the question which is now before you. The time must come when the whole truth will be known. The judgment day will reveal every man's religion, of what sort it is. The parable of the wedding-garment will receive an awful fulfilment. Surely it is a thousand times better to find out _now_ your condition, and to repent, than to find it out too late in the next world, when there will be no space for repentance. If you have common prudence, sense, and judgment, consider what I say. Sit down quietly this day, and examine yourself. Find out the real character of your religion. With the Bible in your hand, and honesty in your heart, the thing may be known. Then resolve to find out.
(2) My second word of application shall be a _warning_. I address it to all who know, in their own consciences, that their religion is not real. I ask them to remember the greatness of their danger, and their exceeding guilt in the sight of God.
An unreal Christianity is specially offensive to that Great God with whom we have to do. He is continually spoken of in Scripture as the God of Truth. Truth is peculiarly one of His attributes. Can you doubt for a moment that He abhors everything that is not genuine and true? Better, I firmly believe, to be found an ignorant heathen at the last day, than to be found with nothing better than a nominal religion. If your religion is of this sort, beware!
An unreal Christianity is sure to fail a man at last. It will wear out; it will break down; it will leave its possessor like a wreck on a sandbank, high and dry and forsaken by the tide; it will supply no comfort in the hour when comfort is most needed,--in the time of affliction, and on the bed of death. If you want a religion to be of any use to your soul, beware of unreality! If you would not be comfortless in death, and hopeless in the judgment day, be genuine, be real, be true.
(3) My third word of application shall be _advice_. I offer it to all who feel pricked in conscience by the subject of this paper. I advise them to cease from all trifling and playing with religion, and to become honest, thorough-going, whole-hearted followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.