relation to Christian doctrine. We are to consider it, secondly, with regard to practice; or (which is the same) in regard to defects in moral and Christian character. It may be shown that in respect to character, as well as doctrine, "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." It is so with strictly religious character. Fatal declensions in religion are not ordinarily accomplished at once. The fearful descent is not passed over at a bound. The first step in the declension is probably slight scarcely perceptible. The next is greater, and the next greater, till Christian character is at length forfeited, and hope is gone. A young Christian-a recent convert-a recent professor of religion-with high hopes and animating prospects, begins, it may be, to neglect partially his secret devotions. His closet duties are from time to time omitted. Next, he is found to neglect the stated meetings of the church. Next, the company and conversation of Christians are shunned, and the company of the ungodly is frequented. Next, you hear of him as mingling in some scene of sinful pleasure and amusement; and it is not long, ordinarily, before this man can swear with the profane, and drink with the drunken, and laugh at the censures of the church, and set his brethren at defiance.* How often has all this been acted over in the evangelical churches of our own country! How often, alas! have my own eyes seen it, and wept over it in secret places! And the same course of things is commonly observed, in respect to mere moral character. No one commences life with habits of confirmed vice. This is not possible. Nor are such habits fastened upon a person by a single act. The progress of degradation and ruin is gradual. It is at first a little leaven; but if suffered to remain and operate, it leaveneth the whole lump. Here is a young man, we will suppose, who is vain of his person, and naturally fond of dress and show. This is his ruling passion, his easily besetting sin. As he has not the honest means of gratifying his unholy desire, he resorts to such as are disreputable-dishonest. He descends to deceit and fraud, and it may be to secret and petty larceny; and when his crime is sus pected, he lies to conceal it; and if one lie will not answer his purpose, he lies again. By this time, his conscience has lost its power over him; his moral principle is well nigh gone; and he is prepared for any thing. He stops at nothing for which he has a strong temptation. We may suppose the case of an older man-one who has entered on the active business of life. His passion is for wealth. He *The apostle John has reference to cases such as this, when he says: "They went out from us, because they were not of us," &c. 1 John 19. has an unconquerable desire to be rich. He sets out with the intention to be honest and honorable in all his dealings, but he will be rich, and so-trusting to his good fortune, and hoping for a favorable issue-he branches out into business beyond his means. His error, at the first, is simply one of imprudence, perhaps, but it soon runs him into grosser sins. To accomplish his plans, he has occasion for more money than he can get honestly, and what shall he do? Shall he suffer defeat? Shall he incur a failure? Or shall he descend to dishonesty and wickedness? Shall he put another man's name to a little piece of paper; or cheat an honest, unsuspecting creditor; or obtain goods on false pretenses? The temptation is too strong for him, and he yields to it; and from the moment of his yielding, he enters on a downward path, from which there is no return. He flounders on; he plunges along from bad to worse, till at length property, character, comfort, and perhaps life, are all sacrificed together. He learns, in his own terrible experience, the truth of one of Paul's assertions: "They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." He learns the truth of another of Paul's maxims: "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." Less than a hundred years ago, there lived in England a clergy. man of the Established Church, whose name was William Dodd. He was a popular writer and preacher, was settled in London, became one of the King's chaplains, and obtained other valuable preferments. But he was vain and extravagant, fond of show and popularity, and though his income (for a clergyman) was great, his expenses were greater. He became embarrassed, and to relieve himself from difficulty forged a draught on his friend and former pupil, the Earl of Chesterfield. He was soon detected and convicted; and as forgery was then a capital crime in England, he was publicly executed, in the year 1777. We have here a terrible example, in high life, of the truth I am endeavoring to impress upon you. You here see how sins not regarded as disreputable at first, and thought perhaps to be trivial, lead their unhappy victim along, till he perpetrates an act for which there is no reprieve; till he (in the full sense of the apostle) drowns himself in destruction and perdition. The Scriptures abound with like examples, all going to show the downward tendency of sin, and the certainty of its issues in ruin and in death. Take the case of the first murderer, Cain. He began with envying his brother; then he quarrelled with him; then he slew him. David's fall commenced in the indulgence of lascivious desires. These led him into adultery; and in the hope of concealing his sin and shame, he plotted and perpetrated murder. Solomon-in accordance with oriental custom, but in dis 138 I have noticed but a few of the perverse inferences which the early Gnostics and more especially those who had some respect for Christianity were accustomed to draw from their prime error as to the evil and corrupting nature and tendencies of matter. Enough has been said, however, to show how this one error worked in their minds, and led them along to a perversion and corruption of the entire Gospel. It proved with them, as with the Judaizers, that a little leaven leavened the whole lump. Instances illustrative of the same point are constantly occurring in our own times. Take the case of an individual who is first led to doubt, and then to deny, the proper divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. He may think this, at the time, a small departure from the common faith, and one attended with little or no danger. "Of what importance is it," he says, "so long as I hold to the divine mission of Christ, and receive his instructions, whether I believe or not in the proper divinity of his person ?" But the results of a few years almost invariably show that the question is one of very great importance. For, having rejected the divinity of Christ, the individual supposed will, if consistent, reject the atonement; since none but a divine person can have made an atonement sufficient for a guilty world. And having discarded the idea of a divine Saviour, and of atonement by his death, our inquirer will proceed on to a denial of the connected doctrines of depravity, of regeneration, of justification by faith, and of all that is essential in evangelical religion. The late Dr. Priestley was a student in theology under good. Dr. Doddridge, and commenced his ministry as he tells us, a moderate Calvinist. He entered upon his downward career, by denying the proper divinity of Christ. He was first an Arian, then a Socinian, and then a Materialist and Universalist. He then denied the inspiration of the Scriptures, and closed his life in a state of almost infidelity. Nor is his a peculiar case. Hundreds and thousands have passed through substantially the same experience. Nor would the case be different, supposing a person to commence his wanderings from some other point besides that of the divinity of Christ. Suppose him to commence, if you will, with a rejection of the doctrine of the entire sinfulness of the natural, unrenewed 'man. The race, he thinks, is not fallen so low. We should not take such humbling, degrading views of human nature. Starting from this point, our inquirer is next led to doubt, perhaps, respecting the character and work of the Saviour, and the peculiar work of the Holy Spirit. "I do not feel that I am fallen low enough to need an almighty Saviour, and an almighty Sancti fier, and I cannot believe that any such provision has ever been made for me." Having rejected the doctrine of depravity, the individual supposed denies, of course, the kindred doctrine of regeneration. The most that men need is reformation, not regeneration; to have their characters improved and amended, but not to be born again. And without the doctrines of depravity and regeneration, he cannot hold to any radical distinction between the righteous and the wicked in the present life. "There are differences, indeed, in the characters of men; some are much better than others. But all have some good in them, and there is no radical difference or distinction between the righteous and the wicked." And if there are no radical distinctions among men in this life, the next inference is, that there will be none hereafter. "All may not be equally happy in the future life, but certainly none will be for ever miserable. The eternal burnings of which we hear are a mere bugbear." Having descended to this point, the individual supposed has but another step to take, and if he is a consistent man, he will certainly take it. He will reject the divine authority of the Scriptures, and settle down in cold and cheerless infidelity. For when he looks into his Bible, he finds all those doctrines which one after another he has discarded, clearly there. They are in the Bible, and by no dint of honest interpretation can they be got out of it. And it only remains to reject the whole together, to put out the light of revealed truth, and commence sailing across the troubled sea of life, and the dark waters of death, and into the dread ocean of the future, with naught to direct him but the glimmering rays of misguided and perverted reason. Instances like those here supposed might be multiplied to any extent, and these taken, not from fancy, but from real life. The history of the Church. from the beginning downwards, is filled up with such cases; strewed all the way with the wrecks of individuals who having wandered from the path of truth, have found afterwards no resting-place. They have continued to wander more and more, till the whole mind has become corrupted, and the little leaven has leavened the whole lump. And it is easy to account for these disastrous results, from the natural workings of error, and from the principles and operations of the human mind. Let a person get away from the Bible, and fall into error on almost any point of religious doctrine, and (if he has an active, inquisitive mind) the imbibed error will diffuse itself. It will not lie in the mind alone. It is inconsistent with whatever of truth there is in that mind, and to make room for it, this truth will gradually displaced. The one error will ere long become two, and the two three, and the three four, and so on till the whole mind is disordered, and faith and a good conscience are shipwrecked together. I have thus far illustrated the apostle's maxim in the text, in its relation to Christian doctrine. We are to consider it, secondly, with regard to practice; or (which is the same) in regard to defects in moral and Christian character. It may be shown that in respect to character, as well as doctrine, "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." It is so with strictly religious character. Fatal declensions in religion are not ordinarily accomplished at once. The fearful descent is not passed over at a bound. The first step in the declension is probably slight scarcely perceptible. The next is greater, and the next greater, till Christian character is at length forfeited, and hope is gone. A young Christian-a recent convert-a recent professor of religion-with high hopes and animating prospects, begins, it may be, to neglect partially his secret devotions. His closet duties are from time to time omitted. Next, he is found to neglect the stated meetings of the church. Next, the company and conversation of Christians are shunned, and the company of the ungodly is frequented. Next, you hear of him as mingling in some scene of sinful pleasure and amusement; and it is not long, ordinarily, before this man can swear with the profane, and drink with the drunken, and laugh at the censures of the church, and set his brethren at defiance.* How often has all this been acted over in the evangelical churches of our own country! How often, alas! have my own eyes seen it, and wept over it in secret places! And the same course of things is commonly observed, in respect to mere moral character. No one commences life with habits of confirmed vice. This is not possible. Nor are such habits fastened upon a person by a single act. The progress of degradation and ruin is gradual. It is at first a little leaven; but if suffered to remain and operate, it leaveneth the whole lump. Here is a young man, we will suppose, who is vain of his person, and naturally fond of dress and show. This is his ruling passion, his easily besetting sin. As he has not the honest means of gratifying his unholy desire, he resorts to such as are disreputable-dishonest. He descends to deceit and fraud, and it may be to secret and petty larceny; and when his crime is suspected, he lies to conceal it; and if one lie will not answer his purpose, he lies again. By this time, his conscience has lost its power over him; his moral principle is well nigh gone; and he is prepared for any thing. He stops at nothing for which he has a strong temptation. We may suppose the case of an older man-one who has entered on the active business of life. His passion is for wealth. He *The apostle John has reference to cases such as this, when he says: "They went out from us, because they were not of us," &c. 1 John 19. |