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DISCOURSE XXI.

PERSONAL RELIGION.

Deut. xxx. 14.

BUT THE WORD IS VERY NIGH UNTO THEE, IN THY MOUTH AND IN THY HEART.

MUCH is said of the importance of personal religion, as what alone is pleasing to God, or can secure human salvation. We should know the precise meaning intended in this expression; and my object will be to define it. And first, an idea is given in the text and the circumstances connected with it, the idea that religion consists in nothing external and formal, nor in any sudden impressions made from without upon the mind. The very heavens had been opened to the Jews, and the moral law proclaimed amid terrific sounds and splendors. But the thunders had soon died away, and the lightnings vanished on the burning mount; and nothing could avail any further save the quiet discharge of duty. The commandments, graven on tables of stone, had to be imprinted on the heart.

Moses, in his second communication from God, reverts to the circumstances of the first. He conjures the people not to place their trust in any outward display or sudden excitement. They were not

to gaze upward and ask, Who shall bring down the commandment from the sky? or to look away, and inquire, Who shall transport it from beyond the sea? For what they needed could not come from abroad, but was in their very heart and mouth, in every work they were speaking, or thought they conceived.

Even this simplest and most obvious view of personal religion needs still to be urged. Many seem still to rely for salvation too much on the display made, and the excitement produced by outward circumstances. We may abound in meetings and movements; enthusiastic gatherings in field or forest may kindle all minds with a common sentiment; great revivals may bear away thousands on a torrent of sympathy: but it is all in vain if men do not retire from the tumult to the silent culture of every right disposition and the quiet practice of every duty; in vain, unless they patiently engrave the commandments on inward tables, unless they hear a still voice in the soul, and retain a steady warmth there, when the noise has ceased and the flames have died away, as on the ancient mount of revelation.

But there is yet a stricter meaning in the phrase, personal religion. Our duties may be divided into two great classes; those belonging to social connections, and those included in the mind itself. To the latter, personal religion has primary respect. There are those who seem to think their whole duty is public and official. If they are faithful to every civil relation, and meet every just claim, they think their Christian character complete, and are ready with the young man's confident question to Jesus, "What

lack I yet?" But, like him, they may have in these outward respects acted from worldly motives, without any thorough culture of the religious principle. Do not, then, rest contented with discharging your outward and social obligations. There is a class of duties more solemn still, lying within the circle of your own being. They respect the choice of motives, the establishment of principles, the cultivation of hidden personal graces, the cherishing of just sentiments towards the Author of your being, and a calm, conscious preparation of spirit to meet the solemn eras his finger has marked before you on the line of futurity, death, judgment, and retribution.

These duties press upon you, not only when you sit in some chair of office, or discuss questions of general concern, or deal with your fellow-men in the ordinary transactions of life. The times of peculiar fitness for their discharge are the seasons of retirement from the crowd, when the sounds of business are not heard, when the glare of day has vanished, when you lie awake in the night-watches, with no eye upon you but the All-seeing. These should not be hours of idleness, but faithfully devoted to the culture of personal religion.

But there is a third and still closer view of religion, as a personal thing, to which I invite your thoughts. I believe it is the Creator's design, that religion should be in every soul a peculiar acquisition, and have a solitary, unborrowed character; so that Christians should not be, as we commonly suppose them, mere copies of each other, but possess each one an original character. As the principle of beauty

in nature shows itself in no monotonous succession of similar objects, but is displayed in a thousand colors and through unnumbered forms, so should the principle of piety ever clothe itself in some fresh trait and aspect. I say, this is the Creator's design. The view I offer may be made more clear by considering some of the proofs of this design.

The first proof that each individual should reach a peculiar excellence is, that each has received a peculiar constitution. The human system has, indeed, a certain uniformity, as we speak of human nature in general, all men having the same members and faculties. But as, with the same features throughout the world, there are no two faces alike; so, with the same capacities, there are no two souls alike. Every man has his own powers, passions, tendencies to goodness, and besetting sins. How does this happen? By accident? No one who believes in God can think so. Is it through some fate that has travelled down to us from former times? We cannot reconcile this with God's universal justice. The only supposition left is, that God's design is to give to every man his own materials of character, and lay in every soul afresh the foundations of a divine fabric.

The church has long been rent with a controversy whether we are born pure or corrupt, a question naturally suggested by the struggle between good and evil tendencies in every heart. But is it not a vain dispute? Can we apply such terms as pure, corrupt, to these native tendencies ? Do we not rather employ the right denomination, when we call

That these

them simply materials of character! tendencies should conflict, is made necessary by the very end of our creation, which is virtue. What is virtue but resisting temptation, and choosing good in preference to evil? But how can we resist without desires needful to be resisted? and how prefer good, unless evil also solicit us? But every man has his own desires, therefore his own temptations; therefore, again, a peculiar work to do, and a character of peculiar and original excellence to build up.

Accept, then, your own natural constitution in this view, and use it to this end. Imitate not the example of those who complain of their particular temperament and inclinations, bemoan the depravity and weakness of their nature, and murmur at the task-work marked out. Wonder not why on you have not been bestowed one man's gifts of intellect, another's amiableness of temper, another's perseverance of will. Send no repining sighs to heaven that you have some dispositions by which you are sorely tried, and that certain sins most easily beset you. You are not to contemplate these things in indolent despair, but to mark them as an index to the duties you are called immediately to discharge. Use faithfully the materials put into your hands. Despise not nor faint before what in them may seem rugged and unpromising. You shall find nothing in them so rough and hard, which patient toil will not transform into shapes of wondrous beauty. The house built of light materials, though soon erected, will not stand the blast like that of marble, hewn with long, exhausting labor. Obey the maxim on the ancient