SERMON V.

SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

PSALM CXXXIX. 23, 24.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

NOTHING at first view may seem more wholly placed beyond control than the thought of man. It not only escapes all external power and authority; but it is not even restrained within the limits of nature and reality. No bounds can be set to its excursions. It passes in a moment from earth to heaven, numbers the stars, weighs their masses, traces their courses and predicts their revolutions. While the body is confined to a single planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty, thought can at once transport us into the most distant parts of the universe, or even into the illimitable regions of space. The conception of the mind outruns incalculably the performance of the hand, and we can contrive in minutes, what we can only slowly years.

execute in

To confine within rules a power so restless and excursive might seem at first too hard a task to be attempted. Yet it is a command of the gospel of Christ, that we should confine its wanderings and repress its irregularities; and we may be sure, that whatever God has made necessary, he has also made possible. It is a command which is founded on the most deep and intimate knowledge of the moral nature of man. The connexion between thought and action is so unavoidable, that if the propensities of our nature are to be subjected to regulation at all, the check must be laid on the thought, or it will be in vain to prohibit the action. If to regulate the thoughts be impossible, then is virtue itself impracticable; and to call on us to obey its laws is only cruel and insulting mockery. But this we know to be false. The consciousness of responsibility is written on the human heart, in characters too deep and lasting to be argued away by any sophistry; and if we are commanded to regulate the thoughts, He who gives the command, will give also the er of obedience. For every temptation with which we can be assailed in the world, there is a power within us, greater and mightier than that temptation. We have reason, to discern between good and evil, both in their present and remote consequences. We have freedom to resolve, we

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have conscience and revelation to teach us what to resolve, and we may have, if we ask it, the

grace of God, and his protecting spirit, to sanctify all the good which we desire and intend.

I endeavoured this morning to impress on you the importance of governing the thoughts, by showing, in the first place, its necessity to the full and successful exertion of our mental powers; in the next place to our happiness here, and our fitness for the scenes and duties of actual life; and thirdly to our virtue, and consequently to our everlasting well-being. I shall now endeavour to illustrate the practicability of this duty, and point out some of the means, which may assist us in performing it.

We must begin by conceding, that perhaps no man can so wholly regulate attention by his will, that his ideas shall always come and go exactly at his command. There is a constant succession of thoughts, an ever-changing current of ideas, passing through the mind, by which our past sensations and impressions, combined and compounded in innumerable ways, present themselves to the attention. This train of our ideas, as it is called, is so far involuntary, that it proceeds, like the act of breathing, without the necessary concurrence of our will, and must be in perpetual motion, whether we sleep or wake, whether we observe or neglect it. We cannot by any effort of mind altotogether stop its course; as any one will perceive, who shall attempt, even for a few moments, to exclude every thought from his mind. He will speedily find, that in spite of himself, a

variety of ideas of whatever he may have felt or done in life, will present themselves unbidden to his memory. This involuntary recurrence of our ideas undoubtedly proves so much as this, that the mere entrance of a wicked imagination into the mind is not in itself criminal.

Evil into the mind of God or man

May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or stain behind.

But though we cannot absolutely forbear to think of something, this train of our ideas by no means proceeds in an arbitrary and unconnected manner, and is far from being independent of our control. Though the mind cannot indeed be left wholly vacant of thought, it rests with us to determine what kind of thoughts shall occupy it. We may arrest any idea we choose, in its course through the mind, dwell upon it, expand it, and call up and arrange a multitude of others related to it. Just so far as this power is lost, reason itself is eclipsed. It is this which enables us to think connectedly and long on any subject that we choose to contemplate, and to determine the class and colouring of the ideas which shall occupy our attention. It in effect amounts to a power of excluding from our minds any thought, which we may be unwilling should enter it. For though we cannot by a direct and despotic effort of will banish any idea, which presents itself, we can indirectly exclude it, by giving the mind another direction. That is to say,

we may prevent the entrance of wrong ideas into the mind, by always keeping it full of those which are right. No man, perhaps, in this world, we must allow, possesses this power in a perfect degree. But a good man is continually making approaches to it. His efforts are constantly aided by the law of habit, by which the yoke of our duties is made each day more easy, and their burthen more light; the force of temptation diminished, the power of resistance increased; till at length, we can conceive of a mind so perfectly governed, that not a thought shall find its way into it, which the God of purity himself might not approve.

I fear, my friends, lest a subject, in itself simple, may have been made obscure by my endeavours to explain it. I mean merely to insist on the fact, which remains a fact whether we succeed in explaining it or not, that we have the power of determining the direction, which our thoughts shall take; and that if evil thoughts gain a permanent possession of our minds, it is because we voluntarily cherish and invite them, or at least do not use our best efforts to exclude them. On this subject it is safe to make an appeal to experience. Ask of any man, who has been drawn into crimes, and he will tell you how easily he might have at first repelled the temptation; how readily his mind would have obeyed a call to another object; how weak the allurement became while he was engaged in any regular occupation, till he has permitted his thoughts and wishes again to fix and fasten on it,