A Sober Mind Considers

Let us see what it is that we press upon you when we exhort you to be sober-minded. And I shall keep to the original word used in my text, and the various meanings of it. It is the same word that is used to set forth the third part of our Christian duty, and is put first of the three lessons which the grace of God teacheth us, to live soberly. And in another place, it is put last of three excellent Christian graces: God hath given us “the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7).

A sober mind considers. You must be considerate and thoughtful, and not rash and heedless. To be sober-minded is to make use of our reason, in reasoning with ourselves and in communing with our own hearts—to employ those noble powers and capacities by which we are distinguished from, and dignified above, the beasts, for those great ends for which we were endued with them, that we may not receive the grace of God in them in vain, but being rational creatures, may act rationally, as behooves us, as becomes us. You learned to talk when you were children, when will you learn to think—to think seriously— to think with purpose? Floating thoughts your heads are full of, foreign and impertinent ones. When will you be brought to close and fixed thoughts, to think with concern and application of the great things that belong to your everlasting peace and welfare?

Some have recommended the study of mathematics as proper to fix the minds of young people and bring them to think. I wish any thing would do it, but would much rather it were done by a deep concern about the soul and another world, which, if it once prevail, will effectively fix the thoughts, and to the best purpose; for when once you come to see the greatness of that God with whom you have to do, and the weight of that eternity you are standing upon the brink of, you will see it is time to think, high time to look about you.

Learn to think not only of what is just before you, which strikes the senses and affects the imagination, but of the causes and consequences and reasons of things; to discover truths, to compare them with one another, to argue upon them and apply them to yourselves, and to bring them to a head; not to fasten upon that which doth come first into your minds, but upon that which should come first, and which deserves to be first considered.

Multitudes are undone because they are unthinking; inconsideration is the ruin of thousands, and many a precious soul perisheth through mere carelessness. “Now therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways”; retire into your own souls, begin an acquaintance with them; it will be the most profitable acquaintance you can fall into, and will turn to the best account. While you are coveting to see the world, and to be acquainted with it, be not strangers at home.

Take time to think, desire to be alone now and then, and let not solitude and retirement be an uneasiness to you, for you have a heart of your own that you may find talk with, and a God nigh unto you with whom you may have a pleasing communion.

Learn to think freely; God invites you to do so: “Come now, and let us reason together.” We desire not that you should take things upon trust, but inquire impartially into them, as the noble Bereans who searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so which the apostles told them. Pure Christianity and serious godliness fear not the scrutiny of a free thought, but despise the impotent malice of a prejudiced one.

There are those, I find, who, under the pretence of being free-thinkers, by sly insinuations endeavor to shock young people’s belief of the divine authority of the Scriptures, and undermine all revealed religion by turning sacred things into jest and ridicule; but they usurp the honorable character of free-thinkers — it does not belong to them — they are as far from the freedom they pretend to as they are from the sincerity they protest against; for it is certain, pride and affectation of singularity and a spirit of opposition and contradiction do as much enslave the thoughts on the one hand as an implicit faith and obedience on the other hand. While they promise men liberty, they do but deceive them; and, under color of being sole masters of reason, and ridiculing all that agree not with them, they as arbitrarily impose upon men’s credulity, as ever popes and councils did under color of being sole masters of faith and anathematizing all that differ from them.

Learn to think for yourselves—to think of yourselves — to think with application. Think what you are, and what you are capable of; think who made you, and what you were made for; for what end you were endowed with the powers of reason, and attended by the inferior creatures; think what you have been doing since you came into the world — of the great work you were sent into the world about — of the vanity of childhood and youth —and how unavoidably the years of them are passed away as a tale that is told — and whether therefore it be not time, high time, for the youngest of you to begin to be religious and to enter in at the strait gate.

Rev. Matthew Henry (1662–1714) pastored a Presbyterian congregation at Chester, England, for twenty-five years. He is best known and loved for his Bible commentary (1708–10), of which George Whitefield professed that he read it through four times — the last time on his knees. This series of articles is taken from his “The Young Christian.”

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