4. In describing the _influence_ of religion, we mean not to extend it so far as to suppose it extirpates every vestige of the fall, or destroys all the relicks of human frailty. It is not the religion of angels, nor of “the spirits of just men made perfect,” but the religion of the soul imprisoned in the body, and embarrassed by that enclosure, in the exertion of its faculties, that is the subject of our consideration. It is the religion of sinners, saved by grace; and, as sinners, to the very last moment of life, depending upon grace alone: in whom, amidst their various conflicts, and numberless infirmities, it nevertheless produces the most surprising effects. Observe its influence on the heart of a sinner. It softens what was obdurate as the rock, and fixes what was inconstant as the wind; arrests the fugitive in his flight from the ways of God, and brings the once profligate prodigal back to his father’s house with a heart pierced with sorrow for past transgressions, and more deeply still by a sense of the love that pardons them. It makes the stout-hearted tremble before the majesty and power of Jehovah, and constrains the abandoned to give up the most beloved lusts. It produces greater wonder still, in obliging the pharisee to give up his self-righteousness, and the formalist to trust no longer in his forms. It can light up a sacred flame in the breasts that had been frozen with formality, and dilate with sentiments of pure benevolence a heart long contracted by self-complacency or worldly-mindedness. It bursts the bonds of the captive who had been “tied and bound with the chain of his sins;” and makes the self-conceited rationalist, who is no less a captive than the profligate, to sit down, Mary-like, at the feet of Jesus, in the character of a pupil, a novitiate, a fool. It pours the balm of comfort into the breast of the afflicted, tempted mourner, and makes “the bones that had been broken to rejoice.” Psal. li. What was it that so instantaneously stopped Saul in his career of cruelty and persecution, and changed a blasphemer into a preacher of the faith, which once he destroyed? What was it that brought Magdalen, a prostitute, to bathe the feet of Jesus with tears of penitence and joy, and to wipe them with the hairs of her head? What was it that tore Zaccheus from an occupation of worldly-mindedness and extortion, and disposed him to make restitution, and to give half his goods to the poor? What was it that made Paul and Silas sing praises to God, though smarting under the lashes they had received, and when confined to a loathsome prison? that kept Stephen composed, and filled him with rapturous views of the glory of God, even when his murderers were taking his life; and that enabled those pious heroes of antiquity, mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to perform so many wonders? It was the _sovereign_ influence of religion in the first instance, its _softening_ and _converting_ power in the second, its