Pastoral Letters on Various Practical Subjects

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. 1861. Excerpt: ... My Dear Christian Friends--I have thought long upon the subject which I have now to bring before you--I mean the power and influence of a divine virtue, which was so marked a feature in the history of Jesus himself, that an inspired apostle conjures his disciples by it when he beseeches them to follow Christ; for, just as God the Father swears to His people by His own holiness, because holiness is an eternal attribute of His divine character, so, in like manner, St. Paul (2 Cor. x. i.) beseeches the Corinthian church, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, as an essential portion of the Redeemer's human nature, and as what the Christian disciple is ever to bear in mind--the example and the motive of his Christian course. The meekness of the Christian believer is, I apprehend, that lowly, humble, and unassuming moral estimate of his own character and pretensions, of which D gentleness is the external exponent and manifestation in all the concerns and relations of life. The first remark, then, which I have to offer on this subject, is the great shortcoming of mankind at large in the important and lovely Christian grace which is implied in Christian Gentleness. I think there are few points on which Holy Scripture is more explicit as well in its injunctions to practise the virtue, as in its recommendations to follow the example of Jesus in this particular; and yet it appears to me there is no point of Christian morals on-which men are so generally deficient, no point on which the precepts of the Gospel, and the practice of its professed adherents, are more signally at variance. Let us first consider the Scripture representations which are made to us on the question. Take our Lord's own express injunctions, conjoined with the various precepts of ...