And here we return to the subject on which I was speaking last Sunday.  It is because we are not led by the Spirit of God, but have within us much of the spirit of the world, that our judgments of right and wrong are so faulty; and that this faultiness is particularly seen in our faint sense of our relations to God.  These relations seem continually foolishness to us, because they are spiritually discerned, and we have so little of God’s Spirit to enable us to discern them.  And our blindness here affects our whole souls; we have, in consequence of it, a much fainter perception even of those truths which reason can discern by herself; or, at any rate, if we do not doubt them, they have over us much less influence.

Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and even of the Spirit of God, does exist in our common judgments; for it is fair to see and to allow what there is of right in our language and sentiments, as well as to note what is wrong.  Reason influences thus much, that we not only commend good generally, and blame evil; but even, in particular cases, we commend, I think, each separate virtue, and we blame each separate vice.  I never heard of justice, truth, kindness, self-denial, &c., being other than approved of in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, malice, and selfishness being other than condemned.  And the Spirit of God influences at least thus much, that we shrink from direct blasphemy and profaneness; we cannot but respect those whom we believe to be living sincerely in the fear of God; and further, if we thought our death near, we should desire to hear of God, and to depart from this life under his favour.  No doubt, all such feelings, so far as they go, are the work of God’s Spirit:  whatever is good and right in our minds towards God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the world, but from the Spirit of God.

Where, then, is the great defect which yet continually makes our practical judgments quite wrong; which makes us, in fact, so often countenance and support evil, and discountenance and discourage good?  First, it is owing to the spirit of carelessness.  One of the most emphatic terms by which a good man is expressed in the language of the Greek philosophers, is that of [Greek:  opdouiaos], “one who is in earnest.”  To be in earnest is, indeed, with, most of us, the same as to be good; it is not that we love evil, but that we are indifferent both to it and to good.  Now, many of us are very seldom in earnest.  By this I mean, that the highest part of our minds, and that which judges of the highest things, is generally slumbering or but half awake.  We may go through, a very busy day, and yet not be, in this true sense, in earnest at all; our best faculties may, as it were, be all the while sleeping or playing.  It is notorious how much this is so in the common intercourse of society in the world.  Light anecdotes; playful remarks; discussions, it may be, about the affairs of the neighbourhood, or, in some companies, on questions