The Religious Use of Excited Feelings.
I. All the passionate emotion, or fine sensibility, which ever man displayed, will never by itself make us change our ways, and do our duty. Impassioned thoughts, sublime imaginings, have no strength in them. They can no more make a man obey consistently than they can move mountains. If any man truly repent, it must be in consequence not of these, but of a settled conviction of his guilt, and a deliberate resolution to leave his sins and serve God. Conscience, and reason in subjection to conscience: theseare those powerful instruments, under grace, which change a man. But you will observe, that though conscience and reason lead us to resolve on and to attempt a new life, they cannot at once make us love it. It is long practice and habit which make us love religion; and in the beginning, obedience, doubtless, is very grievous to habitual sinners. Here, then, is the use of those ardent, excited feelings which attend on the first exercise of conscience and reason, and to take away from the beginning of obedience its grievous-ness, to give us an impulse which may carry us over the first obstacles, and send us on our way rejoicing. Not as if all this excitement of mind were to last (which cannot be), but it will do its office in thus setting us off; and then will leave us to the more sober and higher comfort resulting from that real lovefor religion, which obedience itself will have by that time begun to form in us, and will gradually go on to perfect.
II. To those who feel any accidental remorse for their sins violently exerting itself in their hearts, I say: Do not loiter; go home to your friends, and repent in deedsof righteousness and love; hasten to commit yourselves to certain difficult acts of obedience. Follow on to know the Lord; and to secure His favour by actingupon these impulses; by them He pleads with you as well as by your conscience; they are the instruments of His Spirit, stirring you up to seek your true peace. Still, be quite sure that resolute consistent obedience, though unattended with high transport and warm emotion, is far more acceptable to Him than all those passionate longings to live in His sight, which look like religion to the uninstructed. At the very best, these latter are but the graceful beginnings of obedience, graceful and becoming in children, but in grown spiritual men indecorous as the sports of boyhood would seem in advanced years. Learn to live by faith which is a calm, deliberate, rational principle, full of peace and comfort, and sees Christ, and rejoices in Him, though sent away from His Presence to labour in the world. You will have your reward. He will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. i., p. 112.
References: Luke 8:38. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 242.Luke 8:38; Luke 8:39. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 282.Luke 8:40. Ibid.,vol. vi., p. 226; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 96. Luke 8:42. Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 217; T. Birkett Dover, The Ministry of Mercy,p. 79. Luke 8:43-47. Homiletic Magazine,vol. vii., p. 150.