SERMON VII'.

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD ATTAINABLE ONLY BY
FIRST ACTING ON IT.

ACTS xvii. 27.

"That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one

of us.

1

In a former sermon 1 I endeavoured to point out to you that we are so constituted as to make discipline and exertion necessary, in order to bring us to any good, either in this world or the next; that we were so long in passing from childhood to manhood, not because God had arbitrarily decreed it should be so, but because unless our whole nature was changed it could not possibly be otherwise; and that it was highly to our advantage that our body and mind did not arrive at maturity, till we had acquired enough experience and self-command, to enable us to govern and restrain ourselves; also, that the "sore travail" which God has given us during the remainder of our lives, after we have arrived at maturity, is not given us for nothing, or merely to try

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us what sort of people we are, but that we may be exercised therewith;" that the habits of patience and industry, which are absolutely necessary for most of us, if we would obtain the conveniences and even necessaries of life, may also be of further and much higher service to us, in fitting us for another state of existence; for that in the same way as the habits gained in our education as children fit us afterwards to take our part in active life, so those which we are trained into by this subsequent education, such as honesty, sobriety, self-denial, faith, are the very qualifications of which we shall most stand in need, when after death we have to take our part in a much higher station, in the presence of the great King. In conclusion, I stated that as all this is true, with reference to the formation of our moral character, it is no less so as regards our religious character; that the love and fear of God are just as much habits, as any other temper of mind that can be named, is so; and that discipline is just as requisite for the attainment of the one, as of the other.

On this head I intend to dwell more at length on the present occasion; and to show, not only that we cannot love and fear God as we ought to do, without such previous discipline as He has provided for us, but that without this we cannot even know Him that we have need of this preparation, not solely to acquire such a temper of mind as He is pleased with, and to fit ourselves for dwelling

hereafter in His presence, but in the first place,“ to seek the Lord if haply we may feel after Him and find Him" to learn who that great Being is, “in whom we live and move and have our being."

Now this is a point which deserves more attention than is generally bestowed on it. We are too much in the habit of assuming, that, whatever may be the difficulty of serving God, to know Him is at any rate no hard matter. We remember what we have been taught from children, and have read in the Bible of" God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," and suppose that because we have been always familiar with this and the like forms of words, therefore we have been also familiar with the ideas which they convey,—that to know God is as easy as to talk about Him,-and that since when children we used to make mention of Him in our prayers, the knowledge of Him must be something very simple indeed: and this is not only a great mistake, but leads, in many cases, to very serious bad consequences in practice. For when men have taken up the notion that they know all they need about God and religion, they are very apt indeed to miscalculate on their powers of turning to God as soon as they please. It seems to them that the time will come when they shall be less tempted to disobey His ordinances; and that it will be time enough then to think of acting in conformity with them.

The folly of such a notion is indeed sufficiently

exposed, by showing that a religious frame of mind is a habit, and must be formed, like other habits, by persevering in such conduct as religion prescribes; so that they who go on in courses which God condemns, with the hope that they shall at last be able to lay them aside without trouble, are like men who should march directly away from the place to which they want to go, with the hope that they may by and by find themselves nearer to it than they are at present.

But one would hope it must still farther tend to impress this lesson on men's minds, if they could be made to see, that without trying to serve God, they cannot even know what sort of service He is pleased with,—nay, that they cannot be said even to believe in Him in any true sense.

This then is what it will be my object now to put before you, in the plainest manner I can.

1. Now I suppose that it will hardly be considered strange to assert, that the attaining to that sort of knowledge, which will enable us to act and feel in a manner pleasing to God, cannot be easier than the attaining knowledge of the same sort with reference to our neighbour. It is hardly to be supposed that the relation in which we stand to our Almighty Father and King, is so much more readily understood, than our relation to our earthly fathers and earthly kings; that our duty to the former should come to our knowledge with less pains than our duty to the latter: yet we have but to look around

us, and we shall be forced to own, that the honour due to fathers and to kings, is far from being a thing that we may learn at any time and at once. Perhaps there are scarcely any two persons who look on their relations exactly in the same light, or entertain the same notions of the duties they require of us at any rate, the different conclusions at which different people arrive, are inconsistent to a lamentable degree. Most men may perhaps admit in words that they are bound "to love, honour, and succour their father and their mother; to honour and obey the King, and all that are put in authority under him," yet, if they were to explain what they mean by these words, some would be found to interpret them in a manner which others would think quite profane and wicked. Yet if it were so very plain and obvious a thing, what our duty is in these respects, no such difference could possibly subsist; all would necessarily agree in their opinions, however much they might differ from one another in their conduct. The fact however is, that in such matters as these our opinions are the result of our conduct; and that discipline and experience are just as necessary, in order to teach us what love, honour, and obedience mean, as to enforce them upon us in our lives and conversation; and by natural consequence, those who spend their lives loyally towards the King, and piously towards their parents, come to have a higher and higher sense of what is required of them; whereas, those who are