lieve to follow the performance of every laudable act; or with a secret hope of thereby purchasing the favour of God; we have no need to be surprised, or to murmur at such unsatisfactory results, which may possibly have been designed as our wholesome chastisement, or as the means of checking our farther progress in folly and presumption.
But, if in every act of duty or kindness we engage in, we are actuated simply by a love to God, and a sense of the vast debt of gratitude we owe for all the unmerited mercies we enjoy, accompanied with a conviction, that whatever the apparent results may be, our debt and our duty are still the same; that whatever the apparent results may be, our heavenly Father has the overruling of them, and is able to make everything contribute to the promotion of his glory, and the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom, though in ways which we may neither be able to perceive nor understand; then, indeed, with this view of the subject, we are enabled to persevere through every discouragement, rejoicing only in the ability to labour, and leaving the fruit of our labour with him who has appointed both.
I must yet allude to another cause of discouragement with which the young have to contend, and that is, their own spiritual declension, after the ardour of their early zeal has abated. Perhaps I ought rather to say, their imagined declension, because I believe they are often nearer heaven in this humbled, and apparently degraded state, than when exulting in the confidence of untried patience, fortitude, and love. The prevalent idea under this state of mind is, that of their own culpability, in having made a profession of religion in a state of unfitness, or on improper and insufficient grounds, accompanied with an impression that they are undergoing a just punishment for such an act of presumption, and that the only duty which remains for them to do, is to give up the profession of religion altogether.
