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Sermons, Adapted to the Use of Schools, Selected From the Works of Celebrated Preachers by S. Barrow
Sermons Adapted to the Use of Schools Selected From the Works of Celebrated Preachers by S Barrow Author:Richard Phillips General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1817 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: THIRD SUNDAY. THE LOVE OF COD. 1 John iv. 19. We love him, because Jie first loved us. THE purest motive of human action is the love of G;.)d. There may be motives stronger and more general, but none so pure. The religion, the virtue which owes its birth in the soul to this motive is always genuine religion, always true virtue. Well might our blessed Saviour preach up, as he did, the Jove of God ! It is the source of every thing which is good in man. I do not mean that it is the only source, or that goodness can proceed from no other, but that of all principles of conduct it is the safest, the best, the truest, the highest This love, so important to our religious character, and, by its effect upon that, to our salvation, which is the end of religion; this love, I say, is to be engendered in the soul, not so much by hearing the words of others, or by instruction from others, as by a secret and habitual contemplation of God Almighty s bounty, and by a constant referring of our enjoyments and our hopes to his goodness. A night's rest, or a comfortable meal, will immediately direct our gratitude to God. The use of our limbs, the possession of our senses ; every degree of health, every hour of ease, every sort of satisfaction which we enjoy, will carry our thoughts to the same object. But if our enjoyments raise our affections, still more will our hopes do the same; and most of all beyond comparison, those hopes which religion inspires. Think of man, and think of heaven ; think what he is, and what it is in his power hereafter to become ! Think of this again and again; and it is impossible, but that...« less