ctivity and perseverance. The reason is not merely that men
are in want of leisure, and are sustained in a distressing continuance
of exertion, by their duties towards those dependent on them. They
have their seasons of relaxation, they turn for a time from their
ordinary pursuits; still religion does not attract them, they find
nothing of comfort or satisfaction in it. For a time they allow
themselves to be idle. They want an object to employ their minds upon;
they pace to and fro in very want of an object; yet their duties to
God, their future hopes in another state of being, the revelation of
God's mercy and will, as contained in Scripture, the news of
redemption, the gift of regeneration, the sanctities, the devotional
heights, the nobleness and perfection which Christ works in His elect,
do not suggest themselves as fit subjects to dispel their weariness.
Why? Because religion makes them melancholy, say they, and they wish
to relax. Religion is a labour, it is a weariness, a greater weariness
than the doing nothing at all. "Wherefore," says Solomon, "is there a
price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to
it[1]?"

4. But this natural contrariety between man and his Maker is still more
strikingly shown by the confessions of men of the world who have given
some thought to the subject, and have viewed society with somewhat of a
philosophical spirit. Such men treat the demands of religion with
disrespect and negligence, on the ground of their being unnatural.
They say, "It is natural for men to love the world for its own sake; to
be engrossed in its pursuits, and to set their hearts on the rewards of
industry, on the comforts, luxuries, and pleasures of this life. Man
would not be man if he could be made otherwise; he would not be what he
was evidently intended for by his Maker." Let us pass by the obvious
_answer_ that might be given to this objection; it is enough for my
purpose that it is _commonly urged_, recognizing as it does the fact of
the disagreement existing between the claims of God's word, and the
inclinations and natural capacities of man. Many, indeed, of those
unhappy men who have denied the Christian faith, treat the religious
principle altogether as a mere unnatural, eccentric state of mind, a
peculiar untoward condition of the affections to which weakness will
reduce a man, whether it has been brought on by anxiety, oppressive
sorrow, bodily disease, excess of imag