5. If young converts are not well instructed they will inevi tably backslide: If their instruction is defective, they will probably live in such a way as to disgrace religion. The truth, kept steadily before the mind of a young convert, in proper pro portions, has a natural tendency to make him grow up into the fullness of the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus. If any one point is made too prominent in the instruction given, there will probably be just that disproportion in his character. If he is fully instructed on some points and not in others, you will find a corresponding defect in his life and character. If the instruction of young converts is greatly defective, they will press on in religion no further than they are strongly propelled by the emotions of their first conversion. As soon as that is spent they will come to a stand, and then they will decline and backslide. And ever after you will find that they will go forward only when aroused by some powerful excitement. These are your periodical Christians, that are so apt to wake up in a time of revival, and bluster about as if they had the zeal of an angel, a few days, and then die away as dead and cold as a northern winter. O how desirable, how infinitely important it is, that young converts should be so taught, that their religion will not depend on impulses and excitements, but that they will go steadily onward in the Christian course, advancing from strength to strength, giving forth a clear and safe and steady light all around. REMARKS. I. The church is verily guilty for her past neglect, in regard to the instruction of young converts. Instead of bringing up their young converts to be working Christians, the churches have generally acted as if they did not know how to employ young converts, or what use to make of them. They have acted like a mother, who has a great family of daughters, and knows nothing how to set them to work, and so suffers them to grow up idle and untaught, useless and despised, and to be the easy prey of every designing villain. If the church had only done her duty in training up young converts to work, and labour for Christ, the world would have been converted long ago. But instead of this, how many churches even oppose young converts, when they attempt to set themselves at work for Christ. Multitudes of old professors look with suspicion upon every movement of young converts, and talk against them, and say, They are too forward, they ought not to put themselves forward, but wait for those who are 66 older." There is waiting again. Instead of bidding young converts" God speed," and cheering them on when they take hold with warm hearts and strong hands, very often they hinder them and perhaps put them down. How often have young converts been stopped from going forward, and turned in behind a formal, lazy, inefficient church, till their spirit is crushed, and their zeal extinguished, and after a few ineffectual struggles to throw off the cords, they conclude to sit down with the rest and WAIT. In many places, young converts cannot even attempt to hold a prayer-meeting by themselves, but what the pastor, or some of the deacons, rebukes them for being so forward, and charges them with spiritual pride. "Oh, ho! you are young converts, are you? and so you want to get together and call all the neighbors together to look at you, because you are young converts." You had better turn preachers at once. A celebrated Doctor of Divinity in New England boasted at a public table of his success in keeping all his converts still. He had great difficulty, he said, for they were in a terrible fever to do something, to talk, or pray, or get up meetings, but by the greatest vigilance he had kept it all down, and now his church was just as quiet as it was before the revival. Wonderful achievement for a minister of Jesus Christ! Was that what the blessed Savior meant when he told Peter, "Feed my lambs ?" 2. Young converts should be trained to labour, just as carefully as young recruits in an army are trained for war. Suppose a captain in the army should get his company enlisted, and then take no more pains to teach and train and discipline them, than are taken by many pastors to train and lead forward their young converts. Why, the Why, the enemy would laugh at such an army. Call them soldiers! Why, as to any effective service, they are in a mere state of babyhood, they know nothing what to do or how to do it, and if you bring them up to the CHARGE, where are they? Such an army would resemble the church that does not train her young converts. Instead of being trained to stand shoulder to shoulder in the onset, they feel no practical confidence in their leaders, no confidence in their neighbors, no confidence in themselves, and they scatter at the first shock of battle. Look at the church now. Ministers are not agreed as to what shall be done, and many of them will turn and fight back against their brethren, quarrelling about New Measures, or the Act and Testimony, or something. And as to the members, they cannot feel confidence when they see their leaders so divided. And then if they attempt to do any thing-Alas! alas! what ignorance, what awkwardness, what discord, what weakness, what miserable work they make of it. And so it must continue, until the church shall train up young converts to be intelligent, single-hearted, self-denying, working Christians. Here is an enterprise now going on in this city, which I rejoice to see. I mean the Tract enterprise-a blessed work. And the plan is to train up a body of devoted Christians to do what?-why to do what all the church ought to have been trained to do long ago, to know how to pray, and how to converse with people about their soul's salvation, and how to attend anxious meetings, and how to deal with inquirers, and how to SAVE SOULS. 3. The church has entirely mistaken the manner in which she is to be sanctified. The experiment has been carried on long enough, of trying to sanctify the church, without finding any thing for them to do. But holiness consists in obeying God. And sanctification, as a process, means obeying him more and more perfectly. And the way to promote it in the church, is to give every one something to do. Look at these great churches, where they have 500 or 700 members, and get a minister to feed them from Sabbath to Sabbath, while there are so many of them together that the greater part have nothing at all to do, are never trained to make any direct efforts for the salvation of souls. And in that way they are expecting to be sanctified and prepared for heaven. They never will be sanctified so. That is not the way God has appointed. Jesus Christ has made his people co-workers with him in saving sinners, for this very reason, because sanctification consists in doing those things which are required to promote this work. This is one reason why he has not employed angels in the work, or carried it on by direct revelation of truth to the minds of men. It is because it is necessary as a means of sanctification, that the church should sympathize with Christ in his feelings and his labours for the conversion of sinners. And in this way the entire church must move, before the world will be converted. When the day comes, that the whole church shall realize that they are here on earth as a body of missionaries, and shall live and labor accordingly, then will the day of man's redemption draw nigh. Christian if you cannot go abroad to labour why are you not a missionary in your own family? If you are too feeble even to leave your room, be a missionary there in your bedchamber. How many unconverted servants have you in your house? Call in your unconverted servants, and your uncon verted children, and be a missionary to them. Think of your physician, perhaps, who is laying himself out to save your body, while he is losing his own soul, and you receive his kindness and never make him the greatest return in your power. It is necessary that the church should take hold of her young converts at the outset, and set them to work, and set them to work right. The hope of the church is in the young converts. 4. We see what a responsibility rests on ministers, and elders, and all who have opportunity to assist in training young converts. How distressing is the picture which often forces itself upon the mind, where multitudes are converted, and yet so little pains taken with the young converts, that in a single year you cannot tell the young converts from the rest of the church. And then to see the old church members turn round and complain of these young converts, and perhaps slandering them, when in truth these old professors themselves are most to blame. O, it is too bad. This reaction that people talk so much about after a revival, as if reaction was the necessary effect of a revival, it would never come, young converts never would backslide as they do, if the church were prompt and faithful in attending to their instruction. If they are truly converted, they can be made thorough and energetic Christians. And if they are not such, Jesus Christ will require it at the hands of the church. LECTURE XXI. BACKSLIDERS. TEXT.-"The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways."-Pro verbs xiv. 14. IN remarking on this text I shall inquire, I. Who are backsliders? II. Mention some of the causes of backsliding. And I. Who are backsliders? 1. The term backslide means to go back from a point. In its widest signification when applied to religion, it may mean the declension of any class of persons who profess religion, whether they possess it or not. If they have professed religion, and have at any time conformed their lives to its rules so far as to appear to be religious, and if they then go back from even the appearance of religion, they are called backsliders, although their profession may have been a mere form. So it is equally customary to call them backsliders, whether they apostatize wholly from all religion, or change to another religion. In this sense it is often used under the Old Testament dispensation. God's people used to be spoken of as backsliders, when they went off to idolatry, as well as when they grew lax and unprincipled in the duties of religion. In the sense in which I use the term to-night, I mean by a backslider to denote a person who is truly converted and is a Christian, but has left his first love. His zeal has grown cold. The ardor of his feelings and the depth of his piety are abated. Such a person is a "backslider in heart." He may keep up all the forms of religion, attend to worship, public and private, and read his Bible, and go through all these exercises regularly, but the spirit of it is gone-al the fine edge of pious feelings is blunted. He is a backslider in heart. Probably this applies to some of you who hear me to-night. God knows whether it does or not. Your own consciences will tell you, if you will let them speak. Have you less ardor of feeling, less fixedness of purpose, less faithfulness in duty? If you have, then I mean you. God means you. He calls you backslider. That is your name-you, elder in the church; or you minister, if there be any such here; you |