Evening Exercises for the Closet for Every Day in the Year (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 edition. Excerpt: ...and the fact before us will be found very instructive and useful. We see that the passions are not evil in themselves. They are inherent in our very nature. It is therefore impossible to divest ourselves of them; and if it were possible, we should only reduce ourselves to mere reasoning machines, and unimpressible intelligences. The passions are the springs and impulses of action. All that religion does is, to govern and regulate thenij and to furnish each of them with an appropriate sphere, object, and agency. We learn that we may be angry and sin not. This is the case when we are angry at sin. This he who was the Holy One of God felt and expressed. It is our duty and honour to resemble him; and it is a proof that we are of one Spirit, if w1 af offended him offends us, and we cannot bear them that are evil. Yet anger should be always attended with grief. We should grieve to see men suffering, but we should grieve more to see them sinning. We should feel more to see a man pioud than poor, to see him led captive by vice than laid in irons. No character is so truly pitiable as the wretch who is destroying himself for ever. David felt this, and said, I beheld the transgressors and was grieved: and Jesus was here grieved at the hardness of their hearts. Fools only make a mock of sin. To laugh at a mai who is inflicting upon hit joul the torments of hell, s far more cruel than to turn.nto sport and merriment the tortures of a fellow-creature on the rack. Paul, in his climax, considers our " having pleasure" in the sins of others a greater instance of depravity than " doing them" ourselves; and the reason is, because we may have powerful temptations to the one, whereas the other results from pure congeniality: nothing shows us more than that which can...