Procrastination in Religion.
By Manning
MEN are ever beguiling themselves with the dream that they shall be one day what they are not now ; they balance their present consciousness of a low worldly life and of a mind heavy and dull to spiritual things, with the lazy thought that some day God will bring home to them in power the realities of faith in Christ. So men dream away their lives in pleasures, sloth, trade, or study. Who is there that has not at some time secretly indulged the soothing flattery, that the staid gravity of age, when youth is quelled, or the leisure of retirement, when the fret of busy life is over, or, it may be, the inevitable pains and griefs which are man's inheritance, shall one day break up in his heart the now sealed fountain of repentance, and make, at last, his religion a reality? Who has not allayed the uneasy consciousness of a meager religion with the hope of a future change? Who has not thus been mocked by the enemy of man?—Manning.