CHAPTER I. ON THE LOW STANDARD OF PERSONAL RELIGION NOW PREVALENT, AND THE CAUSES OF IT. "A certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness."-1 KINGS xxii. 34. No one, however well satisfied he may be with the intellectual and moral progress of the age in which we live, can look abroad upon the state of the Church in this country, without gathering from the survey a painful impression that the standard of Personal Religion among us is miserably low. Doubtless there is a great deal of talk upon the subject of religion. And doubtless, also, as the candid observer will not hesitate to confess, there is something better and deeper than talk,—a ‚—a certain excitement of the public mind, a general sensation on the subject, which indeed is the reason of its being so much discussed. The interest of all classes is alive about religion; a delightful contrast indeed with the torpid state of things which Wesley and Whitefield found, when they were first visited with serious convictions, and from which they were God's instruments for recovering both the Church and the sects. But this general interest in the many is quite consistent with a very low standard of religious attain ment in individuals,-low, I mean, in comparison of what might be expected from the motive power which the Gospel brings to bear upon the heart. Let it be considered that God cannot be guilty of the folly of employing a stupendous machinery to achieve an insignificant result, or a result which might be achieved, and has been achieved in another manner. And then let it be observed how stupendous the machinery is, which Christianity brings to bear upon the human heart; that the force employed to sanctify that heart is, if I may say so, the whole force of God,— the force of motive derived from the Incarnation and Resurrection, the force of principle derived from the descent of the Holy Ghost. Let it be remembered that it is the repeatedly declared design of this ex penditure of power to make men meet for the inheritance of the saints in light,-in other words, to sanctify or make saints of them. And then let us turn, and look about us, and ask where are the saints? Is Christianity producing among us the fruits, which God, when He planted it in the soil of the earth, designed it to produce? To many questions respecting our moral condition, we can perhaps give a satisfactory answer. If you ask where is integrity, where is amiability, where is social worth, where is attendance upon the ordinances of religion, where are almsdeeds and charitable institutions, we can produce our instances. But be it remembered that many, if not all, of these fruits can be borne by unregenerate human nature. The annals of heathenism record numerous instances of integrity and even ascetic self-denial among the philosophers, and many others of a high moral tone and a brilliant disinterestedness among the people at large. Nay, is it not notorious that there were among the heathen, men in whom the religious instinct was strongly awakened, men of earnest minds who looked forward with vague apprehension, not however unmixed with hopes of release, to that future life, of which they caught a glimpse ever and anon from the flickering and uncertain ray of the light of Nature? But Christian saintliness must surely go beyond this, as being the product of much higher agencies. And where is Christian saintliness ainong us? Without denying its existence, it may be yet said that none of the instances we can show of it are of a high caste. Indeed, is it not the case that there is a singular analogy between the present state of knowledge and of piety,—that in this age literature and religion fare much alike? In what were called the dark ages, literature was the monopoly of the few; gross ignorance was the condition of the many. There were some monks and priests who represented all the erudition of their times, and were great luminaries of learning. And much later than the dark ages, while printing was in its childhood, and the helps to knowledge few or none, you meet with men who were great repositories of the literature of the day, giants of intellectual resource. It is not so any longer. Every one knows a little; few know much; and fewer still know profoundly; they have drawn what they know, not from the fountain-head, but from commentaries, and abstracts, and suminaries, and indices, and other books whose province is to make the attainment of knowledge cheap and easy. Is it not the same with piety? The great saints of primitive (nay of medieval) times stand out like stars in the firmament of the Church, all the brighter for the darkness of heathenism or of superstition which surrounds them. But the tendency |