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. 1828 Excerpt: ... a possibility of doing them some good, I would not play with them at all. The time is too precious to allow us to waste it, when we have not even a remote prospect of benefiting either ourselves or others. "We cannot too much cultivate that spirit of love, which disposes us to believe and hope the best we can of others. The Lord has favoured you with this disposition, and taught you to be a strict critic over your own conduct, and to make all favourable allowances for your neighbours. This is right: however, our tenderness should not teach us to deviate from the standard of his word. There we read that the desire of the flesh, and of the eyes, and of the pride of life constitute that spirit of the world, which stands in direct opposition to his grace. And we may depend upon it, that they who do not perceive this opposition, as it were with a glance of the eye, are some way or other defective in their views of the Gospel. That religion which does not engage the whole heart for the Lord, can be little better than a name. The comforts of the Gospel neither require nor admit such poor assistance, as worldly amusements offer.--The new nature and the old, have each their respective proper food, suited to their different appetites and relish; and what is nourishing to one, is death to the other. The best that I can say of professors that hanker after the world is, that if they are not entirely dead, they are at least lamentably sick. It indicates a distempered constitution; and till they are debarred such trash, they will not recover their natural appetite. I must thus judge of Gospel hearers, who are to be seen at one time sitting under the ordinances, and at others mixing with that world, at their plays, assemblies, or other diversions; either they never h...
