We are told by our
minister to do this and not to do that; to begin to do this at this new
year and to break off from doing that; but, partly through obstinacy
towards him, reinforced by a deeper and subtler and deadlier obstinacy
against God, and against all the deepest and most godly of the things of
God, we neither do the one nor cease from doing the other. There is a
sullenness in some men's minds, a gloom and a bitter air that rises up
from the unploughed, undrained, unweeded, uncultivated fens of their
hearts that chills and blasts all the feeble beginnings of a better life.
The natural and constitutional obstinacy of the obstinate heart is
exasperated when it comes to deal with the things of God. For it is then
reinforced with all the guilt and all the fear, all the suspicion and all
the aversion of the corrupt and self-condemned heart. There is an
obdurateness of obstinacy against all the men, and the books, and the
doctrines, and the precepts, and the practices that are in any way
connected with spiritual religion that does not come out even in the
obstinate man's family life.
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