Chapter 11: Bound to Know Your True Character the Spirit of God. But he will come at it much more effectually by going to the place, and preaching again there. The exact attitude in which his mind was before, may thus recur to him, and stand in strong reality before his mind.
5. In examining yourselves, be careful to avoid expecting to find all the graces of the Christian in exercise in your mind at once.
This is contrary to the nature of mind. You ought to satisfy yourselves, if you find the exercises of your mind are right, on the subject that is before your mind. If you have wrong feelings at the time, that is another thing. But if you find that the emotions at the time are right, do not draw a wrong inference, because some other right emotion is not in present exercise. The mind is so constituted, that it can only have one train, of emotions at a time.
6. From this subject you see why people often do not feel more than they do.
They are taking a course not calculated to produce feeling. They feel, but not on the right subjects. Mankind always feel on some subjects; and the reason why they do not feel deeply on religious subjects is, because their attention is not deeply fixed on such subjects.
7. You see the reason why there is such a strange diversity in the exercises of real Christians.
There are some Christians whose feelings, when they have any feeling are always of the happy kind. There are others whose feelings are always of a sad and distressing kind. They are in almost constant agony for sinners. The reason is, that their thoughts are directed to different objects. One class are always thinking of the class of objects calculated to make them happy; the other are thinking of the state of the church, or the state of sinners, and weighed down as with a burden, as if a mountain were on their shoulders. Both may be religious, both classes of feelings are right, in view of the objects at which they look.
The apostle Paul had continual heaviness and sorrow of heart on account of his brethren.
No doubt he felt right. The case of his brethren who had, rejected the Savior, was so much the object of his thoughts, the dreadful wrath that they had brought upon themselves, the doom that hung over them, was constantly before him mind, and how could he be otherwise than sad?
8. Observe the influence of these two classes of feelings in the usefulness of individuals.
Show me a very joyful and happy Christian, and he is not generally a very useful Christian. Generally, such are so taken up with enjoying the sweets of religion, that they do but little. You find a class of ministers, who preach a great deal on these subjects, and make their pious hearers very happy in religion, but such ministers are seldom instrumental in converting many sinners, however much they may have refreshed, and edified, and gratified saints. On the other hand you will find men who are habitually filled with deep agony of soul in view of the state of sinners, and these men will be largely instrumental in converting men. The reason is plain. Both preached the truth both preached the gospel, in different proportions, and the feelings awakened correspond with the views they preached. The difference is, that one comforted the saints the other converted sinners.