Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III. ASH-WEDNESDAY. Saint Mark, i. 14, 15.
Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the Gospel. It is a truth so familiar to us, as, from its very familiarity, to appear a truism, that God, in all things, works by means: that, throughout the whole circle of the Divine economy, both physical and moral, in his kingdoms of nature and of grace, Instrumentality is the self-directing law of Him,
who giveth life, and breath, and all things; and from whom alone, as their ever-flowing source and fountain,
cometh down every good, and every perfect gift. But while the recognition and application of this fundamental law of the Divine government, is the first principle of all discoveries in nature, and of all proficiency in science and in arts,?it may be more than questioned whether the law itself ispractically acknowledged and acted on at all in the same measure, or to the same effect, in things spiritual, as in things natural: in other words, whether, not in profession only, but in practice, we deal with the spiritual, as we do with the natural world; regarding instrumentality to be alike the rule of the Divine government in both; and the means of grace, consequently, to be as essential to our progress in Divine knowledge, as the laws of nature to our proficiency in human science. If the matter be honestly and seriously examined into, it will be found that, generally speaking, men do not: that with too many, even of conscientious members of the visible Church, means have not the same sense, the same significancy, the same necessary place, and the same allowed potentiality, in the great work of salvation, as they undis- putedly and indisp…