III.  We are now ready to take the last step in erecting a general system of beneficence, viz.:  the carrying into effect right principles and well-directed resolutions.  While, on the one hand, the intellectual and emotional qualities of the mind give character and vitality to action; on the other hand our conduct exerts a powerful reflex influence on the affections and purposes.  Nothing tends more to give strength and spirit to a mental principle than accordant action; and nothing tends more to obliterate an emotion from the breast, or to paralyze a resolution, than the neglect of its appropriate manifestations.  However deeply the one may be engraven on the soul, or however solid the texture or vigorous the life of the other, a few instances of neglect or violation will strike them with the chills of death.

Principles and resolutions, then, are of little avail without corresponding efforts.  The “well of water” must not only spring up in the soul, it must flow out in the life.  We must act as well as think and resolve; and act, as if we felt that ourselves and all that we have belong to God by the twofold right of creation and redemption; act, as if selfishness were our deadliest foe, and as if it were our great business to attain its mortification and overthrow; act, as if disinterested love, a soul like angels, like God, were the greatest good to be possessed by an intelligent being; act, as if we were prayerfully watching the calls of Christ on our generosity, and were ready and determined manfully to meet them; act, in laying our pecuniary plans, as if the highest object of acquisition were the means of diffusing good; act, as if self-denial were the main condition of our being on earth, and as if the circumstances of the age were requiring of us peculiar sacrifices in order to rescue millions, perishing in mental thraldom, whose souls are as precious as our own; act, as if we were in earnest, as if the whole soul were kindled to a blaze of zeal, and bent on the most determined efforts for the exaltation of Christ in the salvation of men; knowing that the time allotted for the accomplishment of a task eternal in its consequences, is but a hand-breadth.

Act with forecast.  This is a point of unspeakable importance.  I would reiterate and enforce the thought, till it shall be wrought into the very web of all our benevolent purposes.  There must be contrivance to give.  Worldly men make previous arrangements to increase their stores.  Lovers of pleasure contrive to support their follies.  Why should not lovers of Christ be equally wise to fill the world with light, and heaven with anthems?