Remember, brethren, I am not now inveighing against sin; I am not attempting to make a catalogue of your offences, that I may reproach you on account of its length. My object is simply to lead you to ascertain how you regard the things of the Spirit of GOD; and so to help you to answer for yourselves the important questions, why you are not more truly religious, why religion is not with you the one thing needful. Murmur not, then, at home-thrusts. Plead not excuses for what is felt to be amiss. Simply answer to yourselves whether or no your life approves the things of the Spirit as _wisdom_; and, if not, be anxious to learn (that you may profit by the knowledge) _why_ it treats them as foolishness.
Now, St. Paul tells us, that it is the natural man to whom these things are foolishness; and the spiritual by whom they are discerned to be wisdom. In proportion, then, as you receive them not, or undervalue them, you are natural in contradistinction to spiritual. And what is it to be thus natural? It is to regard the things of religion as one doth other things, from a mere human point of view; and with the faculties and feelings that belong to our human nature, independently of the operation on it of the enlightening and persuading and strengthening influences of the Holy Spirit. It is to attempt to acquaint ourselves with them by natural observation and scrutiny; to expect to understand them through natural instruction received into natural ears; to try to picture them by the exercise of natural imagination. This is to be natural; and this is what we too frequently are. We get our religious notions as we do our acquaintance with natural science, or with secular history: from observation, or reading, or hearing. We strive to be religious (simply mechanically) by obeying certain laws, and following certain prescribed courses, just as we become peaceful subjects or approved servants; aiming to do what is bidden, to avoid what is prohibited: not from appreciating the sanction or restriction; not from loving what is ordered; but simply from following it as appointed and obligatory obedience. And we get our conception of heaven, of eternal bliss, of GOD Himself (just as we form ideas about countries afar off, or men who lived before us), by putting together for ourselves, and making to assume a shape of fancy, what we have read or heard about them. It is the mere man—the brain, the mind, the human soul, the natural affections, the unassisted innate energy—which conceives and aims at the observance of the things of the Spirit of GOD. Hence the failure. The natural powers, which alone we use, cannot grasp spiritual things. “_Eye_ hath not seen, nor _ear_ heard, neither have entered into the _mind_ of man to conceive the things which GOD hath prepared for them that love Him:” and yet it is the eye, the ear, or the mind, which alone we use to discern them. We have indeed a _theory_ which contradicts our practice. We know of an external power—the Holy Spirit, which alone can take of the things of GOD and show them unto us, and influence us to love, and enable us to follow them. We know how that power is to be appropriated, and sustained, and made effectual. We talk of its imparted gift, and we use certain words of prayer for its continuance and efficacious working, but still we go on thinking our own thoughts and doing our own deeds, as though there were no such power; and we wonder and grieve that we are not religious; that we do not heartily approve and follow what GOD has enjoined and promised.