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Objections to the Methodist class-meeting answered
Objections to the Methodist classmeeting answered Author:John Bate Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 44 OBJECTION VIII. "I FEAR TO COMMENCE MEETING IN CLASS, LEST I SHOULD NOT CONTINUE." You had better be thus fearful, than possessed of an amount of se... more »lf-confidence which would at once prove your ruin. At the same time, you must guard against a fear which is likely to prove as injurious as self-confidence. Should you join Class with a fear true in its nature and measure, it may be for your good rather than your evil. There is a fear which produces weakness, trepidation, and despair, resulting in a total neglect of the means of self-defence and self-preservation. Should you join with a fear like this, it would of necessity soon bring about the evil which you deprecate. There is a fear which produces examination, watchfulness, diligence, enterprise, resolution ; as that of the soldier, who, while he sees death in the battle field, sees, also, the possibility of victory, and so fights to gain it; or that of the traveller, who, while he sees danger in the way, exercises greater vigilance and caution in his journey; or that of the tradesman, who, while he apprehends something wrong in his accounts, examines them the more carefully in order to ascertain the ground of alarm. If you should unite yourself with Christ's people under the influence of such a fear as this, it would be the means of your perseverance instead of your unfaithfulness. Duty should be one of the guides of your action in the matter now under consideration. Do you feel it to be obligatory upon you to unite yourself with the people of God in this form of Christian communion ? Does the feeling arise from the convictions of the Spirit, the teachings of the Scriptures, and from a conscious necessity of the help which such communion may afford ? Then you are bound to act by this present sense of duty, and not b...« less