Modernized extract from Dr. Doddridges 1825 publication, ‘The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul”
2. How to Spend Your Day With God
Guard your Responsibilities
Be conscientious and diligent in the responsibilities of the day whether work is intellectual or physical. Engage in work with an eye to God’s command, to promote his glory. For this reason avoid a dreaming, sluggish, and idle temper, which nods over its work, and does the business of one hour in two or three hours. Instead attempt to dispatch as much as possible in as little time as capable, considering that it is but a little time we have in all. Be on guard, unless under a pretence of diligence in calling, one falls insensible into excessive worldly cares or covetousness.
2. Guard your Time
Be moderate and innocent in the recreations of the day. Take care that recreations be of the lawful sort; and of the kind that have the grestest tendency to promote the health of the body, and vigour of the mind; and to fit and dispose us for that particular calling which Divine Providence has assigned us. Let us also see to it, that we have a good end in our recreations; that they take not up too much of our time; and that our hearts be not estranged from God by them.
3. Guard your Spirit
Carefully remark and wisely improve the providences of the day. We should, if possible, permit no providential dispensation to pass by us unnoticed, unimproved; but for this purpose make some devotional reflection upon it. Let us strive to be prepared for peculiar providences before they come: and when they come, let us receive and bear them as becomes Christians: our crosses and afflictions with a submissive patience; and our comforts with cheerfulness and holy thankfulness. Let us take care that we
never be ruffled by little cross accidents; but that we still preserve a Christian temper under them. It is very needful to guard our spirits here. Many wise and good men often lose the command of themselves on these comparatively little occasions. When calling up reason and religion to their assistance, stand the shock of great calamities with courage and resolution.
4. Guard against Temptation
Guard against the Temptations of the Day . Here we should endeavour to be previously sensible of them before they come, that we may be pre-armed against them when they do come. After they are come, and lie before us, we must lift up a internal desire to God that he would help us against them. At the same time we must fortify our own hearts against them with such considerations , as these:
Now the combat is going to begin. Now God and the blessed angels are observing what constancy and fortitude there is in my soul; and how far the divine, authority and the remembrance of my own prayers , and former resolutions, will weigh with me when it comes to a trial.
5. Guard Your Thoughts
Govern your thoughts well in solitude , and when alone. For this purpose let us at such times still accustom ourselves to think on something that is useful; such as the perfections of God, the love of Christ, the hurtfulness of sin, the value of time, the awfulness of death, judgment and eternity; or on the last sermon we heard. It might also be very useful to select some one verse of Scripture which we had read in the morning, and to treasure it up in our minds, resolving to think of that at any time when we are at a loss for matter of virtuous reflection.
6. Guard your Tongue
In order to this, we inust take care that we speak nothing injurious of those that are absent; nothing spiteful or ill-natured of those that are present; nothing which may corrupt, mislead, or justly provoke them. We should endeavour also not only not to say any thing that is bad, but to speak something that is good. We should watch for opportunities of introducing useful reflections: and if a virtuous friend attempts to do it, we should endeavour to second it immediately.
7. Guard Your Source of Strength
Always depend on the assisting Grace of God . This must run through ail the foregoing rules, and through all the actions of the day . What ever work we have in hand, whether sacred or civil, whether temple-work, domestic-work, or closet-work, we should still be secretly breathing after divine influences, and depending upon God’s helping grace. A few moments spent in humble fervent breathings after the communications of divine assistance, do more good than than many hours spent in mere reasonings, or in engaging an arm of flesh. Let us then depend steadily and continually on the overruling providence of God in all our worldly affairs , and upon the spirit of God in all our religious ones.
