"It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh; it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were cast into the depths of the sea?" The present instance is perhaps another example of our taking greater concern in the temporal, than in the spiritual interests of our fellow creatures. That man would be deemed, and justly deemed, of an inhuman temper, who in these days were to seek his amusement in the combats of gladiators and prize fighters: yet _Christians_ appear conscious of no inconsistency, in finding their pleasure in spectacles maintained at the risk at least, if not the ruin, of the eternal happiness of those who perform in them! SECT. VI. _Grand defect.--Neglect of the peculiar Doctrines of Christianity._ But the grand radical defect in the practical system of these nominal Christians, is their forgetfulness of all the peculiar doctrines of the Religion which they profess--the corruption of human nature--the atonement of the Saviour--and the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit. Here then we come again to the grand distinction, between the Religion of Christ and that of the bulk of nominal Christians in the present day. The point is of the utmost _practical importance_, and we would therefore trace it into its actual effects. There are, it is to be apprehended, not a few, who having been for some time hurried down the stream of dissipation in the indulgence of all their natural appetites, (except, perhaps, that they were restrained from very gross vice by a regard to character, or by the yet unsubdued voice of conscience); and who, having all the while thought little, or scarcely at all about Religion, "living," to use the emphatical language of Scripture, "without God in the world," become in some degree impressed with a sense of the infinite importance of Religion. A fit of sickness, perhaps, or the loss of some friend or much loved relative, or some other stroke of adverse fortune, damps their spirits, awakens them to a practical conviction of the precariousness of all human things, and turns them to seek for some more stable foundation of happiness than this world can afford. Looking into themselves ever so little, they become sensible that they must have offended God. They resolve accordingly to set about the work of reformation.--Here it is that we shall recognize the fatal effects of the prevailing ignorance of the real nature of Christianity, and the general forgetfulness of its grand peculiarities. These men _wish_ to reform, but they know neither the real _nature_ of their distemper nor its true remedy. They are aware, indeed, that they must "cease to do evil, and learn to do well;" that they must relinquish their habits of vice, and attend more or less to the duties of Religion: but having no conception of the actual malignity of the disease under which they labour, or of the perfect cure