MEDITATIONS AND CKITICISMS 187 



able to him. Atheism itself, if sincere and honest, is 

 more in keeping with the order of the world than a 

 cowardly and lukewarm deism. Belief in Christ will 

 not save a man ; he must be saved already or he is 

 lost, — saved by his character and conscience, or there 

 is no material for belief in Christ to work upon. 

 How many people we see who freely and heartily 

 subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, yet in whom 

 we have no confidence, and with whom we want no 

 intimate relations. And it is not because they are 

 hypocrites ; it is because they are incapable of truth- 

 fulness or manliness. 



Belief is not saving, but character is. How shall 

 we get character ? then, how deepen and fertilize 

 the groundwork of men's natures ? It cannot be 

 done in a moment ; conversion will not do it. 

 When a man of force and integrity joins the church, 

 the church has an acquisition ; but when a slippery, 

 inconstant, and equivocating person joins it, it has 

 put a brick in its walls that will not stand the 

 weather. The frosts and the rains will crumble it, 

 and the structure be weakened. 



Character is of slow growth. It cannot be made 

 to order. The most that can be done to encour- 

 age or stimulate it is to lay the emphasis where it 

 belongs ; to insist upon things that are essential ; 

 to stop trying to convert men to a creed, but to 

 open their eyes to a law ; show them the penalties of 

 fickleness, falsehood, intemperance, unchastity, riot- 

 ous living, etc., not because they contravene some 

 command or precept of the Bible, or because they 



