y come into your hearts--they are not your own
thoughts--they are the voice of One holier than you--wiser than you--One
who loves you better than you love yourselves--One pleading with you,
stirring you up by His Spirit, if it be but for a moment, to see the
things which belong to your peace.

But what can you say for yourselves, if having once had these thoughts,
having once settled in your own minds that the Gospel of God is right and
you are wrong, if you persist in disobeying that gospel--if you agree one
minute with the inner voice, which says, "Do this and live, do this and
be at peace with God and man, and your own conscience"--and then fall
back the next moment into the same worldly, selfish, peevish,
sense-bound, miserable life-in-death as ever?

The reason, my friends, I am afraid, with most of us is, sheer folly--not
want of cunning and cleverness, but want of heart--want of feeling--what
Solomon calls folly (Prov. i. 22-27), stupidity of soul, when he calls on
the simple souls, How long ye simple ones will you love simplicity or
silliness, and the scorners delight in their scorning (delight in
laughing at what is good), and fools hate knowledge--hate to think
earnestly or steadily about anything--the stupidity of the ass, who is
too stubborn and thick-skinned to turn out of his way for any one--or the
stupidity of the swine, who cares for his food and nothing further--or
worse than all, the stupidity of the ape, who cares for nothing but play
and curiosity, and the vain and frivolous amusements of the moment.

All these tempers are common enough, and they may be joined with
cleverness enough. What beast so clever as an ape? yet what beast so
foolish, so mean, so useless? But this is the fault of stupidity--it
blinds our eyes to the world of spirits; it makes us forget God; it makes
us see first what we can lay our hands on, and nothing more; it makes us
forget that we have souls. Our glorious minds and thoughts, which should
be stretching on through all eternity, are cramped down to thinking of
nothing further than this little hour of earthly life. Our glorious
hearts, which should be delighting in everything which is lovely, and
generous, and pure, and beautiful, and God-like--ay, delighting in God
Himself--are turned in upon themselves, and set upon our own gain, our
own ease, our own credit. In short, our immortal souls, made in God's
image, become no use to us by this stupidity--they seem for mere