This is one fault, and by far the most common.  We make Christ’s service the business only of a very small portion of our lives; we hallow only a very small part of our words and actions by doing them in his name.  Unlike our Lord’s own parable, where he compares Christianity to leaven hidden in the three measures of meal till the whole was leavened, the practice rather has been to keep the leaven confined to one little corner of the mass of meal; to take care that it should not spread so as to leaven the whole mass; to keep our hearts still in the state of the world when Christ visited it—­“the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not;” that is, it did not take the light into itself so as to be wholly enlightened:  the light shone, and there was a bright space immediately around it; but beyond there was a blackness of darkness into which it vainly strove to penetrate.

On the other hand there has been, though, more rarely, a fault of the opposite sort.  Men have said that they were in all their actions of ordinary life doing Christ’s will, that they endeavoured always to be promoting some good object; and that the peculiar services of religion, as they are called, were useless, inasmuch as in spirit they are worshipping God always.  This is a great error; because, as a matter of fact, it is false.  We may safely say that no man ever did keep his heart right with God in his ordinary life, that no one ever became one with Christ, and Christ with him, without seeking Christ where he reveals himself, it may not be more really, but to our weakness far more sensibly, than in the common business of daily life.  We may be happy if we can find Christ there, after we have long sought him and found him in the way of his own ordinances, in prayer, and in his holy communion.  Even Christ himself, when on earth, though his whole day was undeniably spent in doing the will of his heavenly father,—­although to him doubtless God was ever present in the commonest acts no less than in the most solemn,—­yet even he, after a day spent in all good works, desired a yet more direct intercourse with God, and was accustomed to spend a large portion of the night in retirement and prayer.

Without this, indeed, we shall most certainly not say and do all in the name of the Lord Jesus; much more shall we be in danger of forgetting him altogether.  But supposing that we are not neglectful of our religious duties, in the common sense of the term, that we do pray and read the Scriptures, and partake of Christ’s communion, yet it will often happen that we do not connect our prayers, nor our reading, nor our communion, with many of the common portions of our lives; that there are certain things in which we take great interest, which, notwithstanding, we leave, as it were, wholly without the range of the light of Christ’s Spirit.  There is a story told that, in times and countries where there prevailed the deepest ignorance, some who