Private Thoughts About Christian Living (3)

Religion is seeking after the gracious presence of Cod in the soul; and finding Him there, is salvation or heaven begun. Those who have experienced the two states of nature and grace, know the difference to be as great as between heaven and earth.

It is a terrible mortification to a serious man, to find the evil spirit still in possession, after he had thought it entirely gone. But withal it affords a happy conviction of our importance, as well as inbred corruption, and will lead in time, with hearty repentance and true faith, to that friendly power, from whence cometh our help.

In temporals, riches is power; in spirituals, poverty.

It is with the soul as with the stomach; there must be a healthy constitution of both to digest and assimilate their respective food.

There is great folly and presumption in comparing ourselves with others, or despising any man. We may be worse than others, when we think ourselves better: possibly we neither know them nor ourselves. If we are really better, the difference is not from ourselves; and, whatever they may be, our own want of humility is certainly a most terrible defect.

Meekness of wisdom compels, where reason cannot persuade.

Holiness is happiness. They are to each other as cause and effect, and one necessarily produces the other, at least more than anything else can do. But what passes in the world for virtue, is counterfeit.

Christ would be loved for all He did, and for all He is; and we cannot love Him for one, without loving Him for the other. The sense of His benefits will be in proportion to the sense we have of our own sinfulness, which cannot be without an earnest desire to be delivered from it.

He who can say, “I am so weary of sin, as to be weary of life, and even long to put off that flesh which is the seat of it,” says a great deal, though he may still labor under many imperfections.

Never turn aside from any command for the cross that is in it, for that is the very thing that makes it a blessing, and the means of spiritual improvement. The Holy Ghost is most, if not only, a comforter, in the absence or contempt of worldy comforts. It seems better to take the measure of our state from a real change of desires, and continual progress towards perfection, than any sensible communications, joyous feelings, or high raptures. When men are taught to expect these, as the great marks and seals of their adoption, the pride of some will soon help them to a competent share of them; whilst others, less bold, and not willing to outrun their own experience, will be thrown into grievous perplexities.

If I resign myself to the Spirit, it must be with a full resolution to do and suffer a great deal. He will not take me on hand upon any other terms.

Nothing can make life pleasant, but some kind of acquiescence in the present hour; from a consciousness that we are in it according to the order of God, either doing or suffering His will, or at least not acting contrary to it.

Rev. Thomas Adam (1701-1784) was a godly divine and student of John Newton, who pastored a congregation in Lincolnshire (or 58 years. Like John Newton, he remained within the Anglican Church all his life.

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