Christian Morality Indispensable

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1819 edition. Excerpt: ...In a word, whether in public or private distress, Christian compassion can do a great deal to console and diminish, if not conquer calamities. But our Lord's compassion, as we have observed, was not confined to the body, it was principally exerted towards the soul, and for the sake of that eternal state of things, in which the soul will exist in the endless kingdom of redeemed Saints. He had compassion especially on the spiritual wants of the multitude, and with wonderful condescension, and more than human authority, " taught them the way of God in truth." He likewise directed his disciples " to pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth labourers into his harvest-f-," and by Christian instruction plentifully gather all nations into his Church. That compassion, with which our divine Master beheld and instructed the ignorant, has been an highly useful example to mankind, and has led his compassionate followers to found Christian schools and colleges, that Christ might continue, as he describes himself to be, in every sense "the light of the world %. For he not only gave light to the naturally blind, but to those who laboured under the mental darkness of ignorance, and the delusion of sin, and who were thereby likely to fall into tlie abyss of eternal misery; that we might propose his pattern to ourselves, as an incitement to the practice of the sublimest Christian charity and compassion. Matt. xxii. 16. f Ibid. Lx. 38. % Jotn viii. 12. The tears of friendship and compassion which he shed at the grave of Lazarus, although he knew his own power to raise him from the dead, is a reproach and condemnation of all stoical apathy, and shews, that Christianity encourages us H to weep with them that weep,"...