The Christian Life: Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its HelpsArnold, Thomas
Religion
The Christian Life: Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps
Arnold, Thomas
Christian life; Sermons, English
And here we return to the subject on which I was speaking last Sunday.
It is because we are not led by the Spirit of God, but have within us
much of the spirit of the world, that our judgments of right and wrong
are so faulty; and that this faultiness is particularly seen in our
faint sense of our relations to God. These relations seem continually
foolishness to us, because they are spiritually discerned, and we have
so little of God's Spirit to enable us to discern them. And our
blindness here affects our whole souls; we have, in consequence of it, a
much fainter perception even of those truths which reason can discern by
herself; or, at any rate, if we do not doubt them, they have over us
much less influence.
Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and even of the Spirit
of God, does exist in our common judgments; for it is fair to see and to
allow what there is of right in our language and sentiments, as well as
to note what is wrong. Reason influences thus much, that we not only
commend good generally, and blame evil; but even, in particular cases,
we commend, I think, each separate virtue, and we blame each separate
vice. I never heard of justice, truth, kindness, self-denial, &c., being
other than approved of in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, malice,
and selfishness being other than condemned. And the Spirit of God
influences at least thus much, that we shrink from direct blasphemy and
profaneness; we cannot but respect those whom we believe to be living
sincerely in the fear of God; and further, if we thought our death
near, we should desire to hear of God, and to depart from this life
under his favour. No doubt, all such feelings, so far as they go, are
the work of God's Spirit: whatever is good and right in our minds
towards God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the world, but from
the Spirit of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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