Section I. The nature of true religion.
It is natural that those who have experienced the agitations which frequently attend upon conversion, and have felt the peace which flows from a hope of acceptance with God, to imagine that the conflict is over; the victory won, and the work of religion accomplished. This imagination is soon dissipated. Birth is not the whole of life; neither is conversion the whole of religion. A young mother may, in the fulness of her joy, forget for a moment that her vocation as a mother is but just begun; but when she looks upon her infant, so wonderful in its organization and instinct with an immortal spirit, the sight of its helplessness makes her feel how great a work she has still to do. An hour’s neglect might prove the ruin of her hopes. Thus the young Christian, although at first disposed to think that his work is finished, soon finds that the feeble principle of spiritual life needs to be watched and nourished with ceaseless care. If abandoned at its birth, it must perish as certainly and as speedily as an exposed infant.
Another mistake on this subject is made by those who suppose that religion is a fitful sort of life; an alternation of excitement and insensibility. Those who labour under this delusion, are religious only on certain occasions. They live contentedly for months in unconcern, and then, if they can be moved to tenderness or joy, they are satisfied with the prospect of another period of collapse. No form of life is thus intermittent. Neither plants nor animals thus live. Men do not, when in health, pass from convulsions to fainting, and from fainting to convulsions; nor does religion, when genuine, ever assume this form. It has, indeed, its alternations, as there are periods of health and sickness, of vigour and lassitude in the animal frame; but just so far as it deserves the name of religion, it is steady, active and progressive; and not a series of spasms.
It is a still more common error to suppose that religion is rather an external than an internal service. There are multitudes who consider themselves to be religious, because they attend upon religious services; who suppose that a regular attendance upon public worship, and the outward forms of religion is enough to entitle them to the character of Christians.
The Scriptures teach us that religion is a new, spiritual life. Its commencement is, therefore, called a new birth, a creation, a spiritual resurrection. It is, as to its principle or source, mysterious. No man can tell what life is. He sees its different forms in vegetables, animals, and in the rational soul, but he cannot detect the secret spring of these different kinds of activity. The nature of spiritual life is not less inscrutable. The wind bloweth where it listeth; ye hear the sound thereof, but ye cannot tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit. A new kind of activity manifests itself in the soul that is born of God; but whence that activity springs, and how it is maintained, are among the secret things of God. We cannot doubt, however, that there is some permanent cause of those new exercises. We know that the life of the body does not consist in the acts of seeing, hearing, tasting, &c.; nor does the soul consist of thought and volition; neither does spiritual life consist in the acts which manifest its existence. There is in regeneration a change effected in the state of the soul which accounts for its perceptions, purposes and feelings being different from what they were before, and for their so continuing. The cause of this difference is sometimes called a new heart, or grace, or the spirit, or the new man, or the renewal of the inner man. All these terms are used to designate the principle of spiritual life, which manifests itself in the fruits of holiness. It is called life because it is thus permanent, or abiding. Those who for a time manifest a degree of ardour and activity in relation to religion and then lose all interest in the subject, are like dead bodies on which electricity may for a while produce some of the appearances of animation, but which soon become insensible to all means of excitement. In such cases there is no principle of life. Where religion is genuine, it has its root in a new heart and is, therefore, permanent.
It is moreover characteristic of the life of sentient and rational creatures, to be spontaneous in its exercises. There are certain acts to which it prompts and in which it delights. It is not by constraint that animals eat, or drink, or sport in the consciousness of strength; neither is it by compulsion that men exercise their minds in the reception and communication of ideas and the reciprocation of feeling. To be so isolated from their fellow-beings as to be prevented from giving vent to the force of intellectual and social life, is the severest of all condemnations. In like manner reverence, gratitude, love, submission, are the spontaneous exercises of the renewed heart. They are the free, unbidden, unconstrained effusions of the soul. That religion which is reluctant, or forced, whether by fear or stress of conscience, is spurious. Filial obedience, if rendered from a dread of punishment, or from mere regard to appearances, is very different from that which flows from respect and love; and unless the service which we render to God flows unbidden from the heart, it is no evidence that we are his children. The Bible represents the people of God as delighting in the things of God. His word, his ordinances, his sanctuary, his presence are their chief joy. When a man is ill, he takes little pleasure in the ordinary sources of enjoyment, and when the Christian is in a declining state, he knows little of the joy which belongs to religion. Still whatever there is of spiritual life in any soul, will manifest itself in spontaneous exercises of piety.