Interest in human salvation.

Companions; friends; neighbors.

of God's kingdom and the salvation of sinners, is not enough to enable you to go forward with much success, you must not attempt to remedy the difficulty by exhibiting more of the appearance, but by securing more of the reality. This brings us to the second of the directions we proposed to give.

2. Cultivate a genuine interest in the salvation of men, by appropriate meditation and prayer. It should be a part of our daily duty, in our hours of retirement and devotion, to bring the spiritual condition and prospects of our neighbors and friends distinctly before our minds. We have in the ordinary walks of life, so many mere business dealings with those around us, that we soon come to consider them in the light of mere business or social connections. The merchant or mechanic, whom we meet with every day, we soon come to consider as merelu a merchant or mechanic. -we think of him as a workman,—we look at his character in a business point of view, and after a short time, we cease to regard him as an immortal being, going to the judgment, and destined to an eternity of holy happiness, or of wretchedness and sin. We forget that he has a soul to be saved, and that the responsibility of doing something to promote its salvation, devolves upon us. Now, this disposition to overlook the spiritual condition and prospects of our fellow men, is one which we can avoid only by continued meditation and prayer. We must have time, when, in the privacy of the closet, we may regard our fellow men as they are,— and see their true spiritual condition; when we may look at our neighbors and friends with a view to their prospects as immortal beings.

And we must not only think of the character and condition of our companions and friends, in respect to their prospects for eternity, but a part of our daily duty must be, honest, heartfelt prayer for them. I do not mean that we must utter a cold form of petition, asking, in general terms, for the conversion of sinners, and for the extension of God's

Prayer.

A test of sincere prayer.

kingdom. We all do this as a matter of course.

The lan

guage forms a part of every prayer, and it is uttered by thousands every morning, who feel none of the desires they seem to express. What I mean by really praying for sinners, is a very different thing.

Sincere prayer for the conversion of souls must spring from a distinct view of their spiritual danger, and an honest desire that they may be rescued from sin and its consequences. We must think of our neighbors and friends, of a parent, a husband or a child, as an enemy of God, justly obnoxious to his anger, and actually condemned already With our hearts full of compassion for them, and sorrow for the awful fate which we see impending over them, we must go alone before God, and pour out our whole souls before him, in fervent supplications that he will have mercy upon them and save them. It is not the cold repetition of a form of words, to which we have become so habituated that we cannot well construct a prayer without it, that will prevail with God. No, it is the warm, deep fervency of the heart, that feels for the sorrows and sufferings which it wishes to relieve.

There is one test of genuine prayer for sinners which is so simple and so easily applied, that I cannot forbear mentioning it here. It is the freedom with which particular cases are brought before God.

When our devotions are cold and formal, we content ourselves with generalities; but when prayer comes from the heart, it is dictated by feelings of strong compassion, and this compassion is awaked by considering the spiritual wants, and the gloomy spiritual prospects, of individuals. We shall bring these individual cases before God. We shall come with our neighbors, our acquaintances,-the one who walks with us to church, or who sits in the same seat; or our friend, or our parent, or our child. We shall bring the individual case to God, with strong crying and tears, that God would save them,—those particular individ

Religious emotion.

Nature and province of it.

Illustration.

uals, from the woes and sufferings we see hanging over their heads.

3. Do not, however, lay too much stress upon religious emotion. One of the most common religious errors of the present day, is, the habit of confounding religious interest with religious emotion. Interest in religion is our constant duty. Emotion, is one of the forms which this interest occasionally assumes. Now many persons confound the two, and think that they are in a cold, stupid state, unless their hearts are full of a deep, overwhelming emotion. They struggle continually to awaken and to sustain this emotion, and are distressed and disappointed that they cannot succeed.

They fail, for the obvious reason that the human heart is incapable of long continued emotion of any kind, when in a healthy state. Susceptibility of emotion is given by the Creator for wise and good purposes, but it is intended to be an occasional, not an habitual state of the mind; and, in general, our duty is to control, rather than to cherish it.

He sets off, therefore, on the explore the ground and preAs soon as he gets fairly country, his mind is daily

For example, a man loves his wife and his little children, and thinks that he may promote their permanent good in the world, by removing to a new home in the West, where he can make his labors far more effectual in laying a foundation for their wealth and prosperity, than he can in the home of his own childhood. long and toilsome journey, to pare the way for them to follow. upon the confines of the settled engrossed by his labors and cares. Now, he is toiling over the rough and miry road,—now hesitating upon the bank of a rapid stream,— —now making his slow and tedious way through the unbroken forest, his mind intent in studying the marks of the trees, or the faint traces of the Indian's path. During all this time, he feels no emotion of love for his wife and children, but his mind is under the continued influence of the strongest possible interest in them. It is

The traveller at the West.

His letter.

Emotion.

love for them which carries him on, every step of the way. It is this that animates him, this that cheers and sustains; while he perhaps very seldom pauses in his labors and cares, in order to bring them distinctly to his mind, and fill his heart with the flowings of a sentimental affection.

At length, however, at some solitary post-office, in the cabin of a settler, he finds a letter from home, and he lays the reins upon his saddlebow, and reads the welcome pages, while his horse, willing to rest, walks slowly through the forest.

As he reads sentence after sentence of the message which has thus found its way to him from his distant home, his ardent affection for the loved ones there, which has, through the day, remained calm within, a quiet and steady principle of action, awakes and begins to agitate his bosom with more active emotions: and when, at the close of the letter, he comes upon a little postscript, rudely printed, asking "father to come home soon," it calls to his mind so forcibly that round and happy face which smiled upon him from the steps of the door when he came away, that his heart is full. He does not love these absent ones any more than he did before; but his love for them takes for the moment a different form. Nor is it that his affection is merely in a greater state of intensity than usual, at such a time. It is in a totally different state; different in its nature, and different, nay, the reverse in its tendency. For while love as a principle of action, would carry him forward to labor with cheerfulness and zeal for the future good of his family,-love, as a mere emotion, tends to destroy all his interest in going forward, and to lead him to turn round in his path, and to seek his shortest way back to his home. He readily perceives this, and though the indulgence of such feelings may be delightful, he struggles to put them down. He suppresses the tear which fills his eye,-folds up his letter,—spurs on his horse, and instead of considering the state of emotion, the one to be cultivated, as the

Conditions of religious emotion.

Wasted efforts.

only genuine evidence of true love, he regards it rather as one to be controlled and suppressed, as interfering with the duties and objects of genuine affection.

Now the discrimination, which it is the design of the foregoing case to set in a strong light, is very often not made in religion. But it should be made. Piety, if it exists at all, must exist generally, as a calm and steady principle of action, changing its form, and manifesting itself as religious emotion, only occasionally. The frequency of these emotions, and the depth of the religious feeling which they will awaken, depend upon a thousand circumstances, entirely independent of the true spiritual condition of the soul. The physical influences by which we are surrounded,-the bodily temperament, the state of the health,—the degree of pressure of active duty,the social circumstances in which we are placed,—the season, the hour, the scenery,-a thousand things may, by the combined influence of some or of all of them, fill the heart with religious emotion,-provided that the principle of religion be already established there. But we must not suppose that religion is quiescent and inactive at other times. Religion is, to say the least, quite as active a principle, when it leads a man to his work in the cause of God, as when in his retirement, it swells his heart with spiritual joys. They are, in fact, two distinct forms, which the same principle assumes, and we cannot compare one with the other, so as to assign to either, the pre-eminence. Neither can exist in a genuine state, without some measure of the other. It is, however, undoubtedly the former, which is the great test of christian character. It is the former, which we are to strive to establish in our hearts, and in which we may depend upon making steady and certain progress just in proportion to the faithfulness of our vigilance, and the sincerity of our prayers.

But in point of fact, the attention of Christians in their efforts to make progress in piety, verv often looks almost