Does not an immoderate fondness for these trivial things, insensibly weaken and corrupt our hearts, and lead us, by imperceptible steps, to a temper of mind, and a course of action essentially wrong? The fact is, a state of neutrality in religion, an insipid mediocrity between vice and virtue, though it is what many would be glad to take up with, is an imaginary state; at least, is very seldom, if ever, to be found in a life of gaiety and dissipation. The man who is constantly engaged in the amusements, can scarce ever escape the pollutions, of the world. In his eager pursuits of pleasure, he will be sometimes apt to overshoot the mark, and to go farther than he ought, perhaps than he intended. Even they who are most in earnest about their future welfare; who have taken care to fortify their minds with the firmest principles of religion; who constantly endeavour to keep alive their hopes and fears of futurity; to guard with the utmost vigilance every avenue of the mind, and secure all "the issues of life*:" even these, I say, are sometimes unable, with all their caution and circumspection, to prevent surprise; • Proverbs iv. 23 surprise; with all their strength and resolution to withstand the violence of headstrong passions and desires; which often burst through all restraints, and beat down all the barriers that reason and religion had been a long time raising up against them. What then must be the case when all the impressions of religion are, by the continual attrition of diversions, worn out and effaced; when the mind is stript of all prudential caution; no guard left upon the imagination; no check upon the passions; the natural spring and vigour of the soul impaired, and no supernatural aid to strengthen and support it? What else can be expected, but that we should fall an easy prey to the weakest invader, and yield ourselves up to the slightest temptation? "When the un"clean spirit cometh, he finds every thing "within prepared for his reception, empty, "swept, and garnished: and he taketh with ← him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in and dwell "there, and the last state of that man is 66 worse than the first*" he begins in gaiety, and ends in vice. Let Matt. xii. 44, 45. 66 Let us, however, take this question up an the most favourable grounds: Let us allow it possible for you to run round for ever in the circle of gaiety, without ever once striking into the paths of vice. Is this, do you think, sufficient for salvation? If your amusements as effectually choke the good seed as the rankest weeds of vice, can you with any propriety call them innocent? Do you imagine that God, who is a jealous "God" will bear to be supplanted in your affections by every trifle; or that he will be content with your not taking up arms against him, though you do him not one single piece of acceptable service? The utmost you can plead is a kind of negative merit, the merit of doing neither good nor harm; and what reception that is likely to meet with, you may judge from the answer given to the unprofitable servant, who produced his talent wrapt up in a napkin, undiminished, indeed, but unimproved; "O thou wicked servant, wherefore gavest "thou not my money into the bank, that "at my coming I might have required. * Exod. xx. 5: ❝ mine "mine own with usury *?" It is not enough merely to abstain from gross crimes. It is not enough to enjoy yourselves in an indolent harmless tranquillity; to divide matters so nicely as to avoid equally the inconveniences of vice, and the fatigues of virtue ; to praise religion in words, to love it per-. haps in speculation, but to leave the trouble of practising it to others. This languor and inactivity is a kind of lethargy in the soul, which renders it utterly insensible to the life and spirit of religion. Indifference in any good cause is blamable. In religion, in the Christian religion, it is insupportable. It does violence to the first and fundamental principle of that religion: "Thou shalt love "the Lord thy God with all thy heart, "with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and "with all thy strength." Go now and let your whole heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, be engaged in pursuing your amusements, and promoting your pleasures, and then lay claim to the rewards of Christianity. Happy will it be for you, if you can escape * Luke xix. 23. + Mark xii. 30. escape σε وو its punishments. The Gospel, I am sure, gives you no grounds to suppose that you shall. Though you bear no "evil fruit," yet if you bear no "good," you are involved in the sentence of the fig-tree, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground*. To do nothing is in many cases to do a positive wrong, and as such requires a 'positive punishment. To stand neuter in dangerous commotions of the state, the great Athenian lawgiver declared to be a crime against the state; and in like manner the great Christian lawgiver declares," he "that is not with me is against me; and "he that gathereth not with me, scattereth "abroad +." Christianity is throughout an active religion; it consists not only in "abstaining "from all appearance of evil" but "in "being ready to every good work || ;" and if we stop short at the first, we leave the better half of our business undone. Christ himself "went about" continually "doing good §;" and he has prescribed a variety of positive * Luke xiii. 7. || Tit, iii. 1. + Matt. xii. 30. ‡ 1 Thess. v. 22. |