But
you will answer, 'This bustle will go on just as much in Lent as
ever. Our time and thoughts will be just as much occupied. We have
our livings to get. We are not fine gentlemen and ladies who can
lie by for forty days and do nothing but read and pray, while their
tradesmen and servants are working for them from morning to night.
How then can we give up more time to religion now than at other
times?
This is all true enough; but there is a sound and true answer to it.
It is not so much more TIME which you are asked to give up to your
souls in Lent, as it is more HEART. What do I talk of? GIVING UP
more time to your souls? And yet this is the way we all talk, as if
our time belonged to our bodies, and so we had to rob them of it, to
give it up to our souls,--as if our bodies were ourselves, and our
souls were troublesome burdens, or peevish children hanging at our
backs, which would keep prating and fretting about heaven and hell,
and had to be quieted, and their mouths stopped as quickly and
easily as possible, that we might be rid of them, and get about our
true business, our real duty,--this mighty work of eating and
drinking, and amusing ourselves, and making money. I am afraid--
afraid there are too many, who, if they spoke out their whole
hearts, would be quite as content to have no souls, and no necessity
to waste their precious time (as they think) upon religion.
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