Excerpt from The Liberal Preacher, Vol. 1: A Monthly Publication of Sermons by Living Ministers

Tare passage not only teaches us the necessity of diligent endeavors to obtain salvation, but also points out one charac teristic of that state Of mind with which they should be pur sued and this characteristic is religious anxiety. Fear and trembling, when they relate to an Object to be gained or to be lost, necessarily involve this anxiety. I shall devote the usual season this morning, to the consideration of this subject. And I do so, the rather, because the circumstances of our past religious history, and the spirit of the times, I fear, expose this solicitude to misapprehension and distrust.

As to the nature of religious anxiety, I suppose, it may be as intelligible as any other anxiety and yet it needs to be care fully distinguished from inordinate terror and morbid melan choly, for these and other perversions of it, as I shall take Oc casion to Observe, have brought it under great objection. To be anxious then about our business, our reputation, our prospects in life, our friends, 'our children, is more or less the experience of every one, and is therefore very intelligible. N ow to entertain such a solicitude about our religious wel fare to feel, not an extravagant excitement, indeed, nor an absorbing terror but to feel deep, and sober and reasonable apprehensions of danger to ourselves of danger to ourselves as accountable creatures; as weak and errin g and sinful crea tures; encompassed with temptations, often wavering, often falling, always exposed - and yet, amidst sins and follies, amidst temptations and dangers, hastening to a solemn judgment te feel all this, is to cherish a religious anxiety.

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