believe it. The world in which you live is full of mysteries. One would
think that if any thing could be fully comprehended, it must be the acts
of which we are ourselves the authors. By a volition you raise your hand
to your head; but _how_ is the act performed? True, there is in your
body an apparatus of nerves, muscles, joints, and the like; but in what
way does the human will have power over this apparatus? No man can
answer this question: it is wrapped in deep mystery. Why be offended,
then, because the way of salvation revealed in the Bible has like
mysteries--mysteries concerning not your duty, but God's secret and
inscrutable methods of acting?

And since the question now before you is not one of mere speculation,
but one that concerns your immediate duty, be on your guard against the
seductive influence of sinful passion and sinful habit. There is a deep
and solemn meaning in the words of Jesus: "Every one that doeth evil
hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be
reproved." Corrupt feeling in the heart and corrupt practice in the life
have a terrible power to blind the mind. The man who comes to the
examination of the Bible with a determination to persist in doing what
he knows to be wrong, or in omitting what he knows to be right, will
certainly err from the truth; for he is not in a proper state of mind to
love it and welcome it to his soul.

Remember also that it is not the grosser passions and forms of vice
alone that darken the understanding and alienate the heart from the
truth. Pride, vanity, ambition, avarice--in a word, the spirit of
self-seeking and self-exaltation in every form--will effectually hinder
the man in whose bosom they bear sway from coming to the knowledge of
the truth; for they will incline him to seek a religion which flatters
him and promises him impunity in sin, and will fatally prejudice him