rather wrong in their result, although with some right feeling in them,
and therefore as a guide, false and mischievous. That it is natural to
follow these maxims, is quite obvious: they are the besetting sin of
your particular condition; and it is always according to our corrupt
nature to follow our besetting sin. It is quite natural that you should
be careless, profane, mistaking evil for good, and good for evil; but
salvation is not for those who follow their nature, but for those in
whom God's grace has overcome its evil; it is for those, in Christ's
language, who take up their cross and follow him; that is, for those who
struggle against their evil nature, that they may gain a better nature,
and be born, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit of God.

What is to be said to this? or what qualification, or compromise, is to
be made in it? The words of the text will authorize us, at any rate, to
make none: their language is not that of indulgent allowance; but it is
a call, a loud and earnest, even a severe, call, it may be, in the
judgment of our evil nature,--to shake off the weight that hangs about
us; to deliver our hearts from the dominion of that which cannot profit,
and to submit them to Christ alone. This is God's judgment, this is
Christ's word; and we cannot and dare not qualify it. They are evil, for
God and Christ declare it, who judge and live after the maxims of the
society around them, and not after Christ; they are evil who are
careless; they are evil who live according to their own blind and
capricious feelings, now hot, now cold; they are evil who call evil
good, and good evil, because they have not known the Father nor Christ.
This, and nothing less, we say, lest we should be found false witnesses
of God: but if this language, which is that of Scripture, seem harsh, to
any one, oh! let him remember how soon he may change it into the
language of the most abundant mercy, of the tenderest love; that if he
calls upon God, God is ready to hear; that if he seeks to know and to do
God's will, God will be found by him, and will strengthen him; that it
is true kindness not to disguise from him his real danger, but earnestly
to conjure him to flee from it, and to offer our humblest prayers to
God, for him and ourselves, that our judgments and our practice may be
formed only after his example.

LECTURE X.

* * * * *

1 TIMOTHY i. 9.

_The law is not made for a rig