p. 152 | Religious Life by J. F. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 7, 1862

Religious Life.

By J. F. Clarke

THE whole life of a religious man falls into two grand divisions, and all his actions belong to one or the other. The one is the region of piety, the other the region of morality. They ought not to be, and cannot be separated in any man's life; but they can be distinguished though not separated. Piety cannot exist without morality, nor morality without piety, yet they are not the same thing. United they make up religion, or the whole life of a Christian. The region of morality is under the law; it is a stern and rugged clime, a land of restraint, of effort, of struggle, of battle. The performance of duty, the doing the work of the Lord, this is the problem of morality.

If our aim be the perfection of our moral nature, we may set about it in two ways. We may make direct attempts for the cultivation of certain virtues, and for the repression of certain vices, taking them up one by one as a matter of discipline. Or we may labor on the whole instead of the parts, by living in the Spirit, near to God and Christ, and so learning also to walk in the Spirit. Both methods are good, but the second is the most thorough. It is the method of nature, which works upon all parts of the plant at the same time, by filling the whole with life. The great thing needed for moral development is more vital power. Love will make all things new. A profound influence in the center of the soul will cause all parts of life to bud and blossom, and bear fruit.

But what can we do when the door of the heart is closed to God by sin, and the soul is left barren, cold, empty, incapable of any true virtue? We cannot, by an act of the will, create within the heart Christian sentiments and graces; we cannot by moral effort create within the soul generosity or love. What can we do? We can open the door; we can let God's influence come into the heart to lead us to Christ, to give us a sense of his pardoning love, to lift us to a higher plane of conviction. And this is prayer in its most essential nature.—J. F. Clarke.