the divine favor; and confidence, from an appropriation of God’s promises to ourselves.  And in many other ways, also, the Holy Spirit produces spiritual feelings through the instrumentality of the truth.  But all religious feeling, produced by impulse, without any rational view of the truth, is to be suspected.  It may be the work of Satan, who is very busy in counterfeiting religious experiences for those he wishes to deceive.  Every religious affection has its counterfeit.  Thus, sorrow may be produced by the fear of hell, without any sense of the evil of sin; a presumption of our own good estate may be mistaken for faith, and this will produce joy; we may exercise a carnal or selfish love to God, because we think he loves us, and has made us the objects of his special favor; and the promises of God, so far as they concern the personal good of the believer, may administer as much comfort to the hypocrite as to the real saint.

How exceedingly important is it, then, that you should not only exercise a general belief of the great doctrines of the gospel, but that you should have a right apprehension of them.  The truth is so necessary in the Christian warfare, that it is called the sword of the Spirit.  But of what benefit is the sword to the soldier who knows not how to use it?  The sword is used as much to ward off the blows of the enemy, as to attack him.  But the novice, who should engage an enemy, without knowing the use of his weapon, would be thrust through in the first onset.  Hence, the peculiar force of the prayer of our Lord, “Sanctify them through thy truth.”  It is by the use of the truth, as the “sword of the Spirit,” in the Christian warfare, that the work of satisfaction is carried on.

But, as the frame-work of a building, though complete in all its parts, would be no house without a covering; so we may have a perfect knowledge of the abstract doctrines of the Christian religion, and be no Christians.  It is the practical and experimental application of these doctrines to our own hearts and lives, that makes the building complete.  Regard yourself as a subject of God’s moral government, and the doctrines of the Bible as the laws of his kingdom; and you will feel such a personal interest in them, that you cannot rest in abstract speculation.  Study these doctrines, that you may know how to live to the glory of God.

I will now give you a few simple directions for obtaining a correct knowledge of the doctrines of the Bible.

1. Approach the subject with the spirit of a little child. “As new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word.”  “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  A little child is always satisfied of the truth of what his father tells him.  “My father says so,” is reason enough for him.  He does not say, “I will not believe it, because I cannot understand it.”  So it should be your first