er, distinction,
popularity, and credit? I am not at this moment asking whether such
indulgences are in themselves allowable or not, but whether the life
which centres in them does not imply the absence of any very deep views
of sanctification as a process, a change, a painful toil, of working
out our own salvation with fear and trembling, of preparing to meet our
God, and waiting for the judgment? You may go into mixed society; you
will hear men conversing on their friend's prospects, openings in
trade, or realized wealth, on his advantageous situation, the pleasant
connexions he has formed, the land he has purchased, the house he has
built; then they amuse themselves with conjecturing what this or that
man's property may be, where he lost, where he gained, his shrewdness,
or his rashness, or his good fortune in this or that speculation.
Observe, I do not say that such conversation is wrong, I do not say
that we must always have on our lips the very thoughts which are
deepest in our hearts, or that it is safe to judge of individuals by
such speeches; but when this sort of conversation is the customary
standard conversation of the world, and when a line of conduct
answering to it is the prevalent conduct of the world (and this is the
case), is it not a grave question for each of us, as living in the
world, to ask himself what abiding notion we have of the necessity of
self-denial, and how far we are clear of the danger of resembling that
evil generation which "ate and drank, which married wives, and were
given in marriage, which bought and sold, planted, and builded, till it
rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all[1]?"

It is strange, indeed, how far this same forgetfulness and
transgression of the duty of self-denial at present spreads. Take
another class of persons, very different from those just mentioned, men
who profess much love for religion--I mean such as maintain, that if a
man has faith he will have works without his trouble, so that he need
be at no pains about performing them. Such persons at best seem to
say, that religious obedience is to follow as a matter of course, an
easy work, or rather a necessary consequence, from having some strong
urgent motive, or from some bright vision of the Truth acting on the
mind; and thus they dismiss from their religion the notion of
self-denial, or the effort and warfare of faith against our corrupt
natural will, whether they actually own that t