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94 thoughts; other truths may have been or may again be made part of his belief; but if habitually thrown into the shade by the greater prominence given to another view of the subject, they can hardly be called part of his actual belief; they are for the time in a state of abeyance and lifelessness, almost as if they were not held at all. Thus it comes to pass that very many men deceive themselves; they have in a manner two systems of belief: one which they have been taught, and have not altogether unlearnt, and which, if thrown back upon themselves, they would still hold to be true and acknowledge as their own; and another, (composed perhaps of some portions of the former, or it may be the same only superficialized,) which is the way in which religious truth habitually occurs to their mind. Yet because they have never formally parted with the former, and have it in their mind, locked up, as it were, in a chest, they will, under ordinary circumstances, think that they hold it safely; whereas the governing principle of their affections, heart, and life, and the belief of which they are actually conscious, are all the while very different. But in whatever degree this variance between a man's abstract belief, and his habitual animating faith, may be palliated to the individual, or however the truths which he may be said really and influentially to hold, may maintain in some degree his spiritual existence, (and blessed is he, who has not known some degree of such discrepancy,) the influence which a man has upon his contemporaries, or upon posterity, depends entirely upon that, his prominent system of belief. That which has seized possession of his own mind, is that whereby he influences the minds of others. The more retiring parts of his system, by which it may be to him occasionally modified and controlled, have but little influence on himself; how should they then have strength enough to reach others? They die with him, unless revived through some other instrument. Hereby the gradual decline of religious belief is in some measure accounted for; and herein we may see, how, though held extensively, the truths of the Gospel may fail of any general impression; and that they must be held more vividly, more energetically, more