The Circumcision of the Heart

It is the melancholy remark of an excellent man, that he who now preaches the most essential duties of Christianity, runs the hazard of being esteemed, by a great part of his hearers, “a setter forth of new doctrines.” Most men have so lived away the substance of that religion, the profession whereof they still retain, that no sooner are any of those truths proposed which difference the Spirit of Christ from the spirit of the world, than they cry out, “Thou bringest strange things to our ears; we would know what these things mean:”—Though he is only preaching to them “Jesus and the resurrection,” with the necessary consequence of it,—If Christ be risen, ye ought then to die unto the world, and to live wholly unto God.