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influence of the worst temptation which , in such a frame , could assail him , that of putting aside all the influence of that strong internal moral evid ence for Christianity , which he has already resisted too long , and of contenting himself with disputing about the merely outward testimony .
How far better would it be for such a man , could he be made sensible of the injury his inveterate habit of doubting is doing to his moral perceptions ! In reverencing the character of our Saviour , for instance , at the same moment that he believes bim a party to a concerted fraud , he is surely untrue to his own knowledge of right . " But it is a part of his nature , " he may
say , " to love and revere a character so beautiful , so admirable . " He is right—this is the gospel triumph—this is the confidence that we have , when we say , " It is the power of God unto salvation . " But could we say
or feel this while we believed it possessed a most important moral deficiency ! No ; the sceptic ' s heart is far more true to the real character of the Saviour , than his head . He does his own spirit great injustice ; he has not really been loving any thing mean , or weak , or bad : God has placed a power within him that forbids it , and the self-same mighty Being that gave the power , has given him , too , in the gospel an object worthy of exercising
it . This appears to be the grand , the capital fact with which , as Christians , we have to do ; we are content to rest all we have or hope for on the character of the Saviour . We know it is not possible for the mind and feelings of man , soundly and naturally exercised , to resist its claims . The root of love and reverence for it , is laid deep in the human breast . " The kingdom of God" is within us—and there it is our unceasing delight , the never-failing burden of our thanksgivings , to know that we shall find it whensoever we seek for it .
This it is that gives a Christian strength—confident that love to God , and love to goodness , and love to Christ are one , are all modifications of that same ^ indefinable principle , call it by what name you may , which is essentially a part of our natures , " grows with our growth , and strengthens with our strength ; " let us not be dismayed by any apparent hostility to the
gospel ; let us not suppose its light extinguished in a single bosom , so long as there remains a ray of generous feeling , a spark of moral rectitude . The peculiar work , the special business of the believer is to aid in removing whatever is dark , unlovely , or defiled from his own mind , and the minds of his fellow-creatures that the claims of the Saviour may be more fully admitted .
And claims he has upon us , most surely ; multiplied claims , but too often disregarded by the earth-turned body and spirit . Is there no sweetness in the thought that he lived , not merely as a personification of unapproachable excellence , but " as an example , that we might follow his steps" ? Nothing elevating in the remembrance of that parting prayer made " for all them that believe "—that they may be one , as he and his Father are one" ? Nothing affecting in the knowledge that God hath committed all judgment unto him , because he is the Son of man" because he has borne the burthen
of humanity , and is intimately acquainted with the whole of that complex thing upon which he is one day to exercise judgment ? Is it nothing , after the lapse of eighteen hundred years to have him still speaking to us the words of joy and consolation ? Nothing to know that he is the resurrection and the life , the first-fruits of them that sleep ? These are our distinguishing mercies ; mercies involving a large and heavy account of responsibilities , if , professing to receive them , we suffer them not to have their perfect work in our hearts .
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GOO Conscientious Dehm .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1830, page 600, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2588/page/16/
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