Religion Considered as a Preservative from Sin

You want, young man, a shield always at hand, and which is impenetrable by the arrows of your enemies, to defend you from the perils to which you are exposed, and you find it in religion; and it does this by various means. It changes the moral nature, producing a dislike and dread of sin, and a love of holiness and virtue. Piety is a spiritual taste; and, like every other taste, it is accompanied with a distaste for the opposites of those things or qualities which are the subjects of its complacency. Sin is that bitter thing which the soul of a true Christian hates; it is the object of his antipathy, and therefore of his dread. He turns from it with aversion and loathing, as that which is offensive and disgusting. It is not merely that he is commanded by authority to abstain from sin, but he is led away from it by inclination. He may have sinful propensities of his animal nature, but he resists the indulgence of them, for it is sin against God. Now what can be a more effectual protection from a practice or habit than an actual dislike of it, or distaste for it? Who does that which he dislikes to do, except under compulsion? “When you have once tasted the sweetness of religion, how insipid, how nauseous, will be those draughts of vicious pleasure with which the sinner intoxi cates and poisons his soul? “When you have acquired a relish for the pure, calm, satisfying joys of faith and holiness, how entirely will you disrelish the polluting, boisterous, and unsatisfying pleasures of sin! When you have once drunk of the waters of the river of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb, how loathsome will be the filthy, turbid streams of licentious gratification! The new nature, by its own powerful and holy instinct, will turn away your feet from every forbidden place, and every unhallowed scene. Panting after God, and thirsting for the living God, taking pleasure in his ways, and delighting in the communion of the saints, you will shudder at the idea of being found in the haunts of vice, or in the society of the vicious. It will be unnecessary to forbid your going to the tavern, the theatre, the house of ill fame, the gambling-table, or horse-race; your own renewed and sanctified nature will be a law against these things, and compel the exclamation, “I will not sit with vain persons, nor go in with dissemblers; I have hated the congregation of evil-doers, and will not sit with the wicked. Gather not my soul with sinners.”

In addition to this, religion will implant in your hearts a regard to the authority and presence of God. “By the fear of the Lord,” says Solomon, “men depart from evil.” This veneration for God, comes in to aid the operations of a holy taste. By the fear of God I do not mean a slavish and tormenting dread of the Divine Being, which haunts the mind like an ever present spectre, — this is superstition, not religion; but I mean a fear springing out of affection, the fear of a child dreading to offend the father whom he loves. What a restraint from sin is there in that child’s mind! he may be absent from his father; but love keeps him from doing what his father disapproves. So it is with religion; it is love to God, and love originates fear. He who is thus blessed with the love and fear of God is armed as with a shield of triple brass, against sin. The temptation comes with all its seductive force, but it is repelled with the indignant question, shall I do this wickedness, and sin against God?” And then this awful Being is everywhere. “0 Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways,” Psa. cxxxix. 1 — 3. Yes, God is in every place. Heaven and the earth are full of his presence. A person once dreamed that the sky was one vast eye of God, ever looking down upon him. He could never get out of the sight of this tremendous eye. He could never look up but this awful eye was gazing upon him. The moral of this fearful dream is a fact. God’s eye is always, and everywhere, upon us. Who could sin, if he saw God in a bodily form looking upon him. Young man, could you go to the theatre, or to still worse places, if you saw this vast and searching eye, with piercing looks, fixed upon you? Impossible. “No,” you would say, “I must wait till that eye is gone, or closed, or averted.” But it is never gone, never closed, never averted. This the religious man knows, and therefore says, “Thou, God, seest me.” Would you sin, if your father were present? Would you enter the haunt of vice if he stood at the door, looking in your face, and saying, “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not; my son, walk not thou in the way with them, turn thy foot from their path?” You could not so insult and grieve the good man’s heart. But though your earthly father is not there, your heavenly Father is. Your father’s eye does not see you, but God’s eye does. This the religious person believes and feels, and turns away from sin.

Then religion presents a judgment to come. Yes. “God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world by Jesus Christ.” “We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.” What a description! What a day will be the judgment-day! The shout of the descending God; the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God; the bursting tombs, and rising dead; the conflagration of the universe, and the gathering of the nations to the Lord in the air; the separation of the righteous from the wicked; and the final doom of all; the closing of time, and the commencing of eternity; the going away of the wicked into everlasting punishment, and of the righteous into life eternal! Oh, what destinies! The good man believes all this, and acts under its influence. How many has the prospect of the day of judgment alarmed in the midst of their sins; how many has it checked; how many has it been the means of converting! I knew a lady in high life, one of the most accomplished women I ever met with, who, while living in all the gayeties of fashionable life, visiting in noble families, and fascinating them by her power to please, dreamed that the day of judgment was arrived. She saw the Judge, in awful majesty, commence the dread assize. Around him, in a circle, the diameter of which no eye could measure, was drawn the human race, awaiting their doom. With slow and solemn pace, he traversed the whole circle; whomsoever he approved, to them he gave the token of his acceptance by graciously laying his hand upon their heads. Many he passed, and gave them no sign. As he approached the dreamer, her anxiety to know whether she should receive the token of his acceptance be came intense, till as he drew still nearer, and was about to stop before her, the agony of her mind awoke her. It was but a dream: a blessed one, however, for her. It produced, through the Divine blessing, a deep solicitude for the salvation of her soul. She became an eminent and devoted Christian; and some years since departed, to receive from Christ the gracious token of his approval, in his immediate presence, and in the regions of immortality.

You, too, young man, must be brought into judgment. You are to form a part of the circle drawn round Christ, to receive your sentence; he will approach you; he will give you the token of reception or rejection. Do, do consider that tremendous scene. How awful was the irony of Solomon! “Rejoice, 0 young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment,” Eccles. xi. 9. You may go to places of vicious amusement, but you must go from thence to the judgment-seat of Christ: there is a path from every scene of sin to the bar of God. He i goes with you as a witness; and conscience also goes with you as a witness: what witnesses these to be brought against you in judgment! “/ will come near to you to judgment, and /will be a swift witness against all that fear not me, saith the Lord,” Mai. iii. 5. Oh, did you realize this awful fact, did you keep your eye upon the judgment-seat, did you anticipate your appearance at the bar of Christ, which religious men do, and which religion would lead you to do if you possessed it, how effectually would you be protected from the evils by which you are surrounded. Could you sin, with a voice sounding in your ears, “For all these things I will bring you into judgment?” No; here would be a defence to you, as it has been to many others, and is to many now. Adopt it as yours.