CHAPTER X. THE WANT OF POWER TO BELIEVE

You say, I know all these things, yet they bring me no peace.

I doubt much in that case whether you do know them; and I should like you to doubt upon this point. You take for granted much too easily that you know them. Seeing they do not bring to your soul the peace which God says they are sure to do, your wisest way would be to suspect the correctness of your knowledge. If a trusty physician prescribes a sure medicine for some complaint, and if on trial I find that what I have taken does me no good, I begin to suspect that I have some wrong medicine instead of that which he prescribed.

Now are you sure that the truth which, you say you know, is the very gospel of the grace of God? Or is it only something like it? And may not the reason of your getting no peace from that which you believe, just be, because it contains none? You have got hold of many of the good things, but you have missed, perhaps, the one thing which made it a joyful sound? You believe perhaps the whole gospel, save the one thing which makes it good news to a sinner? You see the cross as bringing salvation very near; but no so absolutely close as to be in actual contact with you as you are; not so entirely close but that there is a little space, just a hand breadth or a hairbreadth, to be made up by your own prayers, or efforts, or feelings? Everything, you say, is complete; but then, that want of feeling in myself! Ah, there it is! There is the little unfinished bit of Christ's work which you are trying to finish, or to persuade him by your prayers, to finish for you! That want of feeling is the little inch of distance which you have to get removed before the completeness of Christ's work is available for you!

The consciousness of insensibility, like the sense of guilt, ought to be one of your reasons for trusting him the more, whereas you make it a reason for not trusting him at all. Would a child treat a father or a mother thus? Would it make its bodily weakness a reason for distrusting parental love? Would it not feel that that weakness was thoroughly known to the parent, and was just the very thing that was drawing out more love and skill? A stronger child would need less care and tenderness. But the poor helpless palsied one would be of all others the likeliest to be pitied and watched over. Deal thus with Christ; and make that hardness of heart an additional reason for trusting him, and for prizing his finished work.

This state of mind shows that you are not believing the right thing; but something else which will not heal your hurt; or, at least, that you are mixing up something with the right thing, which will neutralize all its healing properties.

You must begin at the beginning once more; and go back to the simplest elements of heavenly truth, which are wrapped up in the great facts that Jesus died and rose again; facts too little understood, nay, undervalued by many; facts to which the apostles attached such vast importance, and on which they laid so much stress; facts out of which the primitive believers, without the delay of weeks or months, extracted their peace and joy.

You say, I cannot believe. Let us look into this complaint of yours.

I know that the Holy Spirit is as indispensable to your believing, as is Christ in order to your being pardoned. The Holy Spirit's work is direct and powerful; and you will not rid yourself of your difficulties by trying to persuade yourself that his operations are all indirect, and merely those of a teacher presenting truth to you. Salvation for the sinner is Christ's work; salvation in the sinner is the Spirit's work. Of this internal salvation he is the beginner and the ender. He works in you, in order to your believing, as truly as he works in you after you have believed, and in consequence of your believing.

This doctrine, instead of being a discouragement, is one of unspeakable encouragement to the sinner; and he will acknowledge this, if he knows himself to be the thoroughly helpless being which the Bible says he is. If he is not totally depraved, he will feel the doctrine of the Spirit's work a hindrance, no doubt; but as, in that case, he will be able to save himself without much assistance, he might just set aside the Spirit altogether, and work his way to heaven without his help!

The truth is, that without the Spirit's direct and almighty help, there could be no hope for a totally depraved being at all.

You speak of this inability to believe as if it were some unprovided difficulty; and as if the discovery of it had sorely cast you down. You would not have so desponded had you found that you could believe of yourself, without the Spirit; and it would greatly relieve you to be told that you could dispense with the Spirit's help in this matter. If this would relieve you, it is plain that you have no confidence in the Spirit; and you wish to have the power in your own hands, because you believe your own willingness to be much greater than his. Did you but know the blessed truth, that his willingness far exceeds yours, you would rejoice that the power was in his hands rather than in your own. You would feel far more certain of attaining the end desired when the strength needed is in hands so infinitely gracious; and you would feel that the man who told you that you had all the needed strength in yourself, was casting down your best hope, and robbing you of a heavenly treasure.

How eagerly some grasp at the idea, that they can believe, and repent, and turn of themselves, as if this were consolation to the troubled spirit! as if this were the unraveling of its dark perplexities! Is it comfort to persuade yourself that you are not wholly without strength? Can you, by lessening the sum total of your depravity and inability, find the way to peace? Is it a relief to your burdened spirit to be delivered from the necessity of being wholly indebted to the Spirit of God for faith and repentance? Will it rescue you from the bitterness of despair to be told that you had not enough strength left to enable you to love God, yet that in virtue of some little remaining power, you can perform this least of all religious acts, believing on the Son of God?

If such be your feeling, it is evident that you do not know the extent of your own disease, nor the depths of your evil heart, you don't understand the good news brought to you by the Son of God, - of complete deliverance from all that oppresses you, whether it be guilt or helplessness. You have forgotten the blessed announcement, "In the Lord have I righteousness and strength." Your strength, as well as your righteousness, is in another; yet, while you admit the former, you deny the latter. You have forgotten, too, the apostle's rejoicing in the strength of his Lord; his feeling that when he was weak that he was strong; and his determination to glory in his infirmities, that the power of Christ might rest upon him.

If you understand the genuine gospel in all its freeness, you will feel that the man who tries to persuade you that you have strength enough left to do without the Spirit, is as great an enemy of the cross, and of your soul, as the man who wants to make you believe that you are not altogether guilty, but have some remaining goodness, and therefore do not need to be wholly indebted for pardon to the blood and righteousness of Immanuel. Without strength, is as literal a description of your state, as without goodness." If you understand the gospel, the consciousness of your total helplessness would just be the discovery that you are the very sinner to whom the great salvation is sent; that your inability was all foreseen and provided for, and that you are in the very position which needs, which calls for, and shall receive, the aid of the Almighty Spirit.

Till you free yourself in this extremity of weakness, you are not in a condition (if I may say so) to receive the heavenly help. Your idea of remaining ability is the very thing that repels the help of the Spirit, just as any idea of remaining goodness thrusts away the propitiation of the Savior. It is your not seeing that you have no strength that is keeping you from believing. So long as you think you have some strength in doing something, - and specially in performing to your own and Satan's satisfaction, that great act or exercise of soul called "faith." But when you find out that you have no strength left, you will, in blessed despair, cease to work, - and (ere you are aware) - believe! For, if believing be not a ceasing to work, it is at least the necessary and immediate result of it. You expended your little stock of imagined strength in holding fast the ropes of self-righteousness, but now, when the conviction of having no strength at all is forced upon you, you drop into the arms of Jesus. But this you will never do, so long as you fancy that you have strength to believe.

Paul, after many years believing, still drew his strength from Christ alone; how much more must you and others who have never yet believed at all? He said, "I take pleasure in my infirmities," that is, my want of strength. You say, I am cast down because of it!

They who tell you that you have some power left, and that you are to use that power in believing and repenting, are enemies of your peace, and subverters of the gospel. They, in fact, say to you that faith is a work, and that you are to do that work in order to be saved. They mock you. In yielding to them you are maintaining that posture which vexes and resists the Spirit which is striving within you; you are proudly asserting for fallen man a strength which belongs only to the unfallen; you are denying the completeness of the divine provision made for the sinner in the fullness of Him in whom it pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell.

The following sentence from an old writer is worth pondering:

"Ask him what it is he finds makes believing difficult to him? Is it unwillingness to be justified and saved? Is it unwillingness to be so saved by Jesus Christ, to the praise of God's grace in him, and to the voiding of all boasting in himself? This he will surely deny. Is it a distrust of the truth of the gospel record? This he dare not own. Is it a doubt of Christ's ability or goodwill to save? This is to contradict the testimony of God in the gospel. Is it because he doubts of an interest in Christ and his redemption? You tell him that believing on Christ makes up the interest in him. If he says he cannot believe on Christ, because of the difficulty of the acting this faith, and that a divine power is needful to draw it forth, which he finds not, you tell him that believing in Jesus Christ is no work, but a resting on Jesus Christ; and that this pretense is as unreasonable as that if a man wearied with a journey, and who is not able to go one step farther, should argue, I am so tired that I am not able to lie down, when, indeed, he can neither stand nor go. The poor wearied sinner can never believe on Jesus Christ till he finds he can do nothing for himself, and in his first believing doth always apply himself to Christ for salvation, as a man hopeless and helpless in himself. And by such reasonings with him from the gospel, the Lord will (as he hath often done) convey faith, and joy, and peace, by believing."

Your puzzling yourself with this "cannot," shows that you are proceeding in a wrong direction. You are still laboring under the idea that this believing is a work to be done by you, and not the simple acknowledgment of a work done by another. You would fain do something in order to get peace, and you think that if you could only do this great thing called faith, God would reward you with peace. In this view, faith is a price as well as a work; whereas it is neither; but a ceasing from work and from attempting to pay for salvation. Faith is not a climbing of the mountain; but a ceasing to attempt it, and allowing Christ to carry you up in his arms.

You seem to think that it is your own act of faith that is to save you; whereas it is the object of your faith, without which your own act of faith, however well performed, is nothing. Supposing that this believing is a mighty work, you ask, "How am I to get it properly performed?" But your peace is not to come from any such performance, but entirely from Him to whom the Father is pointing, "Behold my servant whom I have chosen." As if he would say, "Look at him as Israel looked at the serpent of brass: forget everything about yourself, - your faith, your frames, your repentance, your prayers, - and look at Him." It is in Him, and not in your poor act of faith, that salvation lies. It is in Him and in his boundless love that you are to find your resting place. Out of Him, not out of your exercise of soul concerning him, that peace is to come. Looking at your own faith will only minister to your self-righteousness; it is like letting your left hand know what your right hand doeth. To seek for satisfaction as to the quality or quantity of your faith, before you will take comfort from Christ's work, is to precede upon the supposition that the work is not sufficient of itself to give you comfort, as soon as received; and that until made sufficient by a certain amount of religious feeling, it contains no comfort to the sinner; in short, that the comforting or comfortable ingredient is an indescribable something, depending for its efficiency chiefly upon the superior excellence of your own act of faith, and the success of your own exertions in putting it forth.

Your inability, then, does not lie in the impossibility of your performing aright this great act of believing, but of ceasing from all such self-righteous attempts to perform any act, or do anything whatever, in order to your being saved. So that he real truth is, that you have not yet seen such a sufficiency in the one great work of the Son of God upon the cross, as to lead you utterly to discontinue your wretched efforts to work out something of your own. As soon as the Holy Spirit shows you the entire sufficiency of the great propitiation, for the sinner, just as he is, you cease your attempts to act or work, and take, instead of all such exercises of yours, that which Christ has done. The Spirit's work is not to enable a man to do something which will save him or help to save him, but so to detach him from all his own exertions and performances, whether good, bad, or indifferent, that he should be content with the salvation which the Savior. of the lost has finished.

Remember that what you call your inability God calls your guilt; and that this inability is a willful thing. It was not put into you by God; for he made you with the full power of doing everything he tells you to do. You disobey and disbelieve willingly. No one forces you to do either. Your rejection of Christ is the free and deliberate choice of your own will.

That inability of yours is a fearfully wicked thing. It is the summing up of your depravity. It makes you more like the devil than almost anything else. Incapable of loving God, or even of believing on his Son! Capable of only hating him, and of rejecting Christ! Oh, dreadful guilt! Unutterable wickedness of the human heart!

Is it really the cannot that is keeping you back from Christ? No, it is the will not. You have not got the length of the cannot. It is the will not that is the real and present barrier. "Ye will not come to me that ye might have life." "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

If your heart would speak out it would say, "Well, after all, I cannot, and God will not." And what is this but saying, "I have a hardhearted God to deal with, who won;t help or pity me?" Whatever your rebellious heart may say, Christ's words are true, "Ye will not." What he spoke when weeping over impenitent Jerusalem he speaks to you, "I would but ye would not."

"They are fearful words," writes Dr. Owen, "ye would not." Whatever is pretended, it is will and stubbornness that lie at the bottom of this refusal." And oh! what must be the strength as well as the guilt of this unbelief, when nothing but the Almightiness of the Holy Ghost can root it out of you?

You are perplexed by the doctrine of God's sovereignty and election. I wonder that any man believing in a God should be perplexed by these. For if there be a God, a King, eternal, immortal, and invisible, he cannot but be sovereign, - and he cannot but do according to his own will, and choose according to his own purpose. You may dislike these doctrines, but you can only get quit of them by denying altogether the existence of an infinitely wise, glorious, and powerful Being. God would not be God were he not thus absolutely sovereign in his present doings and his eternal pre-arrangements.

But how would it rid you of your perplexities to get quit of sovereignty and election? Suppose these were not aside, you still remain the same depraved and helpless being as before. The truth is, that the sinner's real difficulty lies neither in sovereignty nor election, but in his own depravity. If the removal of these hard doctrines (as some call them) would lessen his own sinfulness, or make him more able to believe and repent, the hardship would lie at their door; but if not, then these doctrines are no hindrance at all. If it be God's sovereignty that is keeping him from coming to Christ, the sinner has serious matter of complaint against the doctrine. But if it be his own depravity, is it not foolish to be objecting to a truth that has never thrown one single straw of a hindrance in the way of his return to God?[25] Election has helped many a soul to heaven; but never yet hindered one. Depravity is the hindrance; election is God's way of overcoming that hindrance. And if that hindrance is not overcome in all, but only in some, who shall find fault? Was God bound to overcome it in all? Was he bound to bring every man to Christ, and to pluck every brand from the burning? Do not blame God for that which belongs solely to yourself; nor be troubled about His sovereignty when the real cause of trouble is your own desperately wicked heart.

 

CHAPTER XI. INSENSIBILITY

You say that you do not feel yourself to be a sinner; that you are not anxious enough; that you are not penitent enough.

Be it so. Let me, however, ask you such questions as the following: -

1. Does your want of feeling alter the gospel? Does it make the good news less free, less blessed, less suitable? Is it not glad tidings of God's love to the unworthy, the unlovable, the insensible? Your not feeling your burdens does not affect the nature of the gospel, nor change the gracious character of Him from whom it comes. It suits you as you are, and you suit it exactly. It comes up to you on the spot, and says, Here is a whole Christ for you, - a Christ containing everything you need. Your acquisition of feeling would not qualify you for it, nor bring it nearer, nor buy its blessings, nor make you more welcome, nor persuade God to do anything for you that he is not at this moment most willing to do.

2. Is your want of feeling and excuse for your unbelief? Faith does not spring out of feeling, but feeling out of faith. The less you feel the more you should trust. You cannot feel aright till you have believed. As all true repentance has its root in faith, so all true feeling has the same. It is vain for you to attempt to reverse God's order of things.

3. Is your want of feeling a reason for your staying away from Christ? A sense of want should lead you to Christ, and not keep you away. "More are drawn to Christ," says old Thomas Shepherd, "under a sense of a dead, blind heart, than by all sorrows, humiliations, and terrors." The less of feeling or conviction that you have, you are the more needy; and is that a reason for keeping aloof from him? Instead of being less fit for coming, you are more fit. The blindness of Bartimeus was his reason for coming to Christ, not for staying away. If you have more blindness and deadness than others, you have so many more reasons for coming, so many fewer for standing afar off. If the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint, you should feel yourself the more shut up to the necessity of coming, - and that immediately. Whatever others may do who have convictions, you who have none dare not stay away, nor even wait an hour. You must come!

4. Will your want of feeling make you less welcome to Christ? How is this? What makes you think so? Has he said so, or did he act, when on earth, as if this were his rule of procedure/ Had the woman of Sychar any feeling when he spoke to her so lovingly? Was it the amount of conviction in Zaccheus that made the Lord address him so graciously, "Make haste, for today I must abide at thy house?" The balm of Gilead will not be the less suitable for you, nor the physician there the less affectionate and cordial, because, in addition to other diseases, you are afflicted with the benumbing palsy. Your greater need only gives him an opportunity of showing the extent of his fullness, as well as the riches of his grace. Come to him, then, just because you do not feel. "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." Whatever you may feel, or may not feel, it is still a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Do not limit the grace of God, nor suspect the love of Christ. Confidence in that grace and love will do everything for you; want of confidence, nothing. Christ wants you to come; not to wait, nor to stay away.

5. Will your remaining away from Christ remove your want of feeling? No. It will only make it worse; for it is a disease which he only can remove. So that a double necessity is laid upon you for going to Him. Others who feel more than you may linger. You cannot afford to do so. You must go immediately to Him who is exalted "a Prince and a Savior., to give repentance to Israel, and the forgiveness of sins." Seeing that distance and distrust will do nothing for you, try what drawing near and confidence will do. To you, though the chief of sinners, the message is, "Let us draw near." God commands you to come, without any further delay or preparation; to bring with you your sins, your unbelief, your insensibility, your heart, your will, your whole man, and to put them into Christ's hands. God demands your immediate confidence and instant surrender to Christ. "Kiss the Son," is his message. His word insists on your return, - "Return unto the Lord thy God." It shows you that the real cause of the continuance of this distance is your unwillingness to let Christ save you in his own way, - and a desire to have the credit of removing your insensibility by your own prayers and tears.

6. Is not your insensibility one of your worst sins? A hardhearted child is one of the most hateful of beings. You may pity and excuse many things, but not hard-heartedness. "Thou art the man." Thou art the hardhearted child! Cease then to pity yourself, and learn only to condemn. Give this sin no quarter. Treat it not as a misfortune, but as unmingled guiltiness. You may call it a disease; but remember that it is an inexcusable sin. It is one great all pervading sin added to your innumerable others. This should shut you up to Christ. As an incurable leper you must go to him for cure. As a desperate criminal, you must go to him for pardon. Do not, I beseech you, add to this awful sin, the yet more damning sin of refusing to acknowledge Christ as the healer of all diseases, and the forgiver of all iniquities.

Repentance is only to be got from Christ. Why then should you make the want of it a reason for staying away from him? Go to Him for it. He is exalted to give it. If you speak of waiting, you only show that you are not sincere in your desire to have it. No man in such circumstances would think of waiting. Your conviction of sin is to come, not by waiting, but by looking; looking to Him whom your sins have crucified, and whom, by your distrust and unbelief, you are crucifying afresh. It is written, "They shall look on me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn?"

Beware of fancying that convictions are to save you, or that they are to be desired for their own sakes. Thus writes an old minister, "I was put out of conceit with legal terrors; for I thought they were good, and only esteemed them happy that were under them; they came, but I found they did me ill; and unless the Lord had guided me thus, I think I should have died doting after them." And another says, "Sense of a dead, hard heart is an effectual means to draw to Christ; yea, more effectual than any other can be, because it is the poor, the blind, the naked, the miserable, that are invited."

As to what is called a "law-work," preparatory to faith in Christ, let us consult the Acts of the Apostles. There we have the preaching of the apostolic gospel and the fruits of it, in the conversion of thousands. We have several inspired sermons, addressed both to Jew and Gentile; but into none of these is the law introduced. That which pricked the hearts of the thousands at Pentecost was a simple narrative of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, concluding with these awful words, which must have sounded like the trumpet of doom to those who heard them, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." These were words more terrible than law; more overwhelming than Sinai heard. Awful as it would have been to be told, "Ye have broken the whole law of God;" what was this to being told, "Ye have crucified his Son?" The sin of crucifying the Lord of glory was greater than that of breaking a thousand laws. And yet in that very deed of consummate wickedness was contained the gospel of the grace of God. That which pronounced the sinner's condemnation, declared also his deliverance. There was life in that death; and the nails which fastened the Son of God to the cross, let out the pent up stream of divine love upon the murderers themselves!

The gospel was the apostolic hammer for breaking hard hearts in pieces; for producing repentance unto life. It was a believed gospel that melted the obduracy of the self-righteous Jew; and nothing but the good news of God's free love, condemning the sin yet pardoning the sinner, will, in our own day, melt the heart and soften human rock-work into men." "Law and terrors do but harden;" and their power, though wielded by an Elijah, is feeble in comparison with that of a preached cross. "O blessed cross of Christ," as Luther, using an old hymn, used to say, "there is no wood like thine!"

The word repentance signifies in the Greek, "change of mind;" and this change the Holy Spirit produces in connection with the gospel, not the law. "Repent and believe the gospel: does not mean get repentance by the law, and then believe the gospel; but let this good news about the kingdom which I am preaching, lead you to change your views and receive the gospel. Repentance being put before faith here, simply implies, that there must be a turning from what is false in order to the reception of what is true. If I would turn my face to the north, I must turn it from the south; yet I should not think of calling the one of these preparatory to the other. They must, in the nature of things, go together. Repentance, then, is not, in any sense, a preliminary qualification for faith, - least of all in the sense of sorrow for sin. "It must be reckoned a settled point," says Calvin, "that repentance not only immediately follows upon faith, but springs out of it...They who think that repentance goes before faith, instead of flowing from or being produced by it, as fruit from a tree, have never understood its nature. And Dr. Colquahoun remarks, "Justifying and saving faith is the mean of true repentance; and this repentance is not the mean but the end of that faith."

That terror of conscience may go before faith, I do not doubt. But such terror is very unlike Bible repentance; and its tendency is to draw men away from, not to, the cross. Alarms, such as these, are not uncommon among unbelieving men, such as Ahab and Judas. They will be heard with awful distinctness in hell; but they are not repentance. Sorrow for sin comes from apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, from the sight of the cross and of the love which the cross reveals. The broken and the contrite heart is the result of our believing the glad tidings of God's free love, in the death and resurrection of his Son. Few things are more dangerous to the anxious soul than the endeavors to get convictions, and terrors, and humiliations, as preliminaries to believing the gospel. They who would tell a sinner that the reason of his not finding peace is that he is not anxious enough, nor convicted enough, nor humble enough, are enemies to the cross of Christ. They who would inculcate a course of prayer, and humiliation, and self-examination, and dealing with the law, in order to believing in Christ, are teaching what is the very essence of Popery; not the less poisonous and perilous, because refined from Romish grossness, and administered under the name of gospel.

Christ asks no preparation of any kind whatsoever, - legal or evangelical, outward, or inward, - in the coming sinner. And he that will not come as he is shall never be received at all. It is not exercised souls, nor penitent believers, nor well humbled seekers, nor earnest users of the means, nor any of the better class of Adam's sons and daughters, but "sinner", that Christ welcomes. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. This man receiveth sinners.

Spurious repentance, the produce and expression of unbelief and self-righteousness, may be found previous to faith - just as all manner of evils abound in the soul before it believes. But when faith comes, it comes not as the result of this self-wrought repentance, - but in spite of it; and this so called repentance will be afterwards regarded by the believing soul as one of those self-righteous efforts, whose only tendency was to keep the sinner from the Savior. They who call on penitent sinners to believe, mistake both repentance and faith; and that which they teach is no glad tidings to the sinner. To the better class of sinners (if such there be), who have by laborious efforts got themselves sufficiently humbled, it may be glad tidings; but not to those who are without strength, the lost, the ungodly, the hardhearted, the insensible, the lame, the blind, the halt, the maimed. "It is not sound doctrine," says Dr. Colquhoun, "to teach that Christ will receive none but the true penitent, or that none else is warranted to come by faith to him for salvation. The evil of that doctrine is that it sets needy sinners on spinning repentance, as it were, out of their own bowels, and on bringing it with them to Christ, instead of coming to him by faith to receive it from him. If none be invited but the true penitent, then impenitent sinners are not bound to come to Christ; and cannot be blamed for not coming."

You say, "I am not satisfied with the motives that have led me to seek Christ; they are selfish." That is very likely. The feelings of a newly awakened sinner are not disinterested, neither can they be so.

You have gone in quest of salvation from a sense of danger, or fear of the wrath to come, or a desire to obtain the inheritance of glory. These are some of the motives by which you are actuated.

How could it be otherwise? God made you with these fears and hopes; and he appeals to them in his word. When he says, "Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?" he is appealing to your fears. When he sets eternal life before you, and the joys of an endless kingdom, he is appealing to your hopes. And when he presents these motives, he expects you to be moved by them. To act upon such motives, then, cannot be wrong. Nay, not to act upon them, would be to harden yourself against God's most solemn appeals. "Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men," says Paul. It cannot be wrong to be influenced by this terror. "The remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven." This surely was not wrong. The whole Bible is full of such motives, addressed to our hopes and fears.

When was it otherwise? Among all the millions who have found life in Christ, who began in any other way, or from any higher motive? Was it not thus that the jailer began when the earthquake shook his soul, and called up before his conscience the everlasting woe? Was it not a sense of danger and a dread of wrath that made him ask, "What shall I do to be saved?" And did the apostle rebuke him for this? Did he refuse to answer his anxious question, because his motive was so selfish? No. He answered at once, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

There is nothing wrong in these motives. When my body is painted, it is not wrong to wish for relief. When overtaken by sickness, it is not wrong to send for the physician. You may call this selfishness, which He who made us what we are, and who gave us these instincts, expects us to act upon; and in acting on which, we may count upon his blessing, not his rebuke. It is not wrong to dread hell, to desire heaven, to flee from torments, to long for blessedness, to shun condemnation, and to desire pardon.[26] Let not Satan then ensnare you with such foolish thoughts, the tendency of which is to quench every serious desire, under the pretext of its not being disinterested and perfect.

You think that, were you seeking salvation from a regard to the glory of God, you would be satisfied. But what does that mean, but that, at the very first, even before you have come to Christ, you are to be actuated by the highest of all motives? He who has learned to seek God's glory is one who has already come to Christ; and he who has learned to do this entirely, is no sinner at all, and, therefore, does not need Christ. To seek God's glory is a high attainment of faith; yet you want to be conscious of possessing it before you have got faith, - nay, in order to your getting it! Is it possible that you can be deluding yourself with the idea that if you could only secure this qualification, you might confidently expect God to give you faith. This would be substituting your own zeal for his glory, in the room of the cross of Christ.

Do not keep back from Christ under the idea that you must come to him in a disinterested frame, and from an unselfish motive. If you were right in this thing, who could be saved? You are to come as you are; with all your bad motives, whatever these may be. Take all your bad motives, add them to the number of your sins, and bring them all to the altar where the great sacrifice is lying. Go to the mercy seat. Tell the High Priest there, not what you desire to be, nor what you ought to be, but what you are. Tell him the honest truth as to your condition at this moment. Confess the impurity of your motives; all the evil that you feel or that you don't feel; your hard-heartedness, your blindness, your unteachableness. Confess everything without reserve. He wants you to come to Him exactly as you are, and not to cherish the vain thought that, by a little waiting, or working, or praying, you can make yourself fit, or persuade Him to make you fit.[27]

"But I am not satisfied with my faith," you say. No truly. Nor are you ever likely to be so. At least I should hope not. If you wait for this before you take peace, you will wait till life is done. It would appear that you want to believe in your own faith, in order to obtain rest to your soul. The Bible does not say, "Being satisfied about our faith, we have peace with God," but "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God;" and between these two things there is a wonderful difference. Satisfaction with Jesus and his work, not satisfaction with your own faith, is what God expects of you. "I am satisfied with Christ," you say. Are you? Then you are a believing man; and what more do you wish? Is not satisfaction with Christ enough for you or for any sinner? Nay, and is not this the truest kind of faith? To be satisfied with Christ, is faith in Christ. To be satisfied with his blood, is faith in his blood. Do not bewilder yourself, or allow others to bewilder you. Be assured that the very essence of faith is being satisfied with Christ and his sinbearing work; ask no more questions about faith, but go upon your way rejoicing, as one to whom Christ is all.

Remember, the Baptist's words, "He must increase, but I must decrease." Self, in every form, must decrease, and Christ must increase. To become satisfied with your faith would look as if you were dissatisfied with Christ. The beginning, the middle, and end of your course must be dissatisfaction with self, and satisfaction with Christ. Be content to be satisfied with faith's glorious object, and let faith itself be forgotten. Faith, however perfect, has nothing to give you. It points you to Jesus. It bids you look away from itself to Him. It bids you look away from itself to Him. It says, "Christ is all." It bids you look to him who says, "Look upon me;" who says, "Fear not, I am the first and the last; I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore."

If you were required to believe in your own faith, to ascertain its quality, and to know that you are born again before you were warranted to trust in Jesus, or to have peace, you would certainly need to be satisfied with your own faith. But you are not required to make good any personal claim, save that you are a sinner; not that you feel yourself to be one, (that would open up an endless metaphysical inquiry into your own feelings,) but simply that you are one. This you know upon God's authority, and learn from his word; and on this you act whether you feel your sinfulness or not. The gospel needs no ascertaining of anything about ourselves, save what is written in the Bible, and what is common to all Adam's children, - that we need a Savior. It is upon this need that faith acts; it is this need that faith presents at the throne of grace. The question, then, is not, Am I satisfied with my faith? but, Am I a needy sinner, and am I satisfied that in Christ there is all I need?

You say, "I am not satisfied with my love." What! Did you expect to be so? Is it your love to Christ, or his love to you, that is to bring you peace? God's free love to sinners, as such, is our resting place. There are two kinds of love in God, - his love of compassion to the unbelieving sinner, and his love of delight and complacency to his believing children. A father's love to a prodigal child is quite as sincere as his love to his obedient, loving child at home, though it be a different kind. God cannot love you as a believer till you are such. But he loves you as a poor sinner. And it is this love of his to the unloving and unlovable that affords the sinner his first resting place. This free love of God satisfies and attracts him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us." "We love him because he first loved us." "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."

"I am not satisfied with my repentance," you say. It is well. What should you have thought of yourself had you been so? What pride and self-righteousness would it indicate, were you saying, "I am satisfied with my repentance, - it is of the proper quality and amount." If satisfied with it, what would you do with it? Would you ground your peace upon it? Would you pacify your conscience with it? Would you go with it instead of the blood to a holy God? If not, what do you mean by the desire to be satisfied with your repentance before having peace with God?

In short, you are not satisfied with any of your religious feelings; and it is well that you are not; for, if you were, you must have a very high idea of yourself, and a very low idea of what both law and gospel expect of you. You are, I doubt not, right in not being satisfied with the state of your feelings; but what has this to do with the great duty of immediately believing on the Son of God? If the gospel is nothing to you till you have got your feelings all set right, it is no gospel for the sinner at all. But this is its special fitness and glory, that it takes you up at the very point where you are at this moment, and brings you glad tidings in spite of your feelings being altogether wrong.

All these difficulties of yours have their root in the self esteem of our natures, which makes us refuse to be counted altogether sinners, and which shrinks from going to God save with some personal recommendation to make acceptance likely. Utter want of goodness is what we are slow to acknowledge. Give up these attempts to be satisfied with yourself in anything, great or small, faith, feeling, or action. The Holy Spirit's work in convincing you of sin, is to make you dissatisfied with yourself; and will you pursue a course which can only grieve him away? God can never be satisfied with you on account of any goodness about you; and why should you attempt to be satisfied with anything which will not satisfy him? There is but one thing with which he is entirely satisfied, - the person and work of his only begotten Son. It is with Him that he wants you to be satisfied, not with yourself. How much better would it be to take God's way at once, and be satisfied with Christ? Then would pardon and peace be given without delay. Then would the favor of God rest upon you. For God has declared, that whoever is satisfied with Christ shall find favor with him. His desire is that you should come to be as one with him in this great thing. He asks nothing of you, save this. But with nothing else than this will he be content, nor will he receive you on any other footing, save that of one who has come to be satisfied with Christ, and with what Christ has done.

Surely all this is simple enough. Does it exactly meet your case. Satisfaction with yourself, even could you get it, would do nothing for you. Satisfaction with Christ would do everything; for Christ is ALL. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Be pleased with him in whom the Father is pleased, and all is well.

I suspect that some of those difficulties of yours arise from the secret idea that the gospel is just a sort of modified law, by keeping which you are to be saved. You know that the old law is far above your reach, and that it condemns, but cannot save you. But you think, perhaps, that Christ came to make the law easier, to lower its demands, to make it (as some say) an evangelical law, with milder terms, suited to the sinner's weakness. That this is blasphemy, a moment's thought will show you. For it means that the former law was too strict; that is, it was not holy, and just, and good. It denies also Christ's words, that he came not to destroy but to fulfill the law. God has but one law, and it is perfect; its substance is love to God and man. A milder law must mean an imperfect one; a law that makes God's one law unnecessary; a law that gives countenance to sin. Will obedience to an imperfect law save the breaker of the perfect law? But faith does not make void the law; it establishes it.

It is by a perfect law that we are saved; else it would be an unholy salvation. It is by a perfect law, fulfilled in every "jot and tittle," that we are saved; else it would be an unrighteous salvation. The Son of God has kept the law for us; he has magnified it and made it honorable; and thus we have a holy and righteous salvation. Though above law in himself, he was made under the law for us; and by the vicarious law keeping of his spotless life, as well as by endurance unto death of that law's awful penalties, we are redeemed from the curse of the law. "Christ is the end (the fulfilling and exhausting) of the law, for righteousness to every one that believeth." FOR CHRIST IS NOT A HELPER, BUT A SAVIOR. He has not come to enable us to save ourselves, by keeping a mitigated law; but to keep the unmitigated law in our room, that the law might have no claim for penalty, upon any sinner who will only consent to be indebted to the law keeping and law enduring of the divine Surety.

Others of your difficulties spring from confounding the work of the Spirit in us with the work of Christ for us. These two must be kept distinct; for the intermingling of them is the subversion of both. Beware of overlooking either; beware of keeping them at a distance from each other. Though quite distinct, they go hand in hand, inseparably linked together, yet each having its own place and its own office. Your medicine and your physician are not the same, yet they go together. Christ is your medicine, the Spirit is your physician. Do not take the two works as if they were one compounded work; nor try to build your peace upon some mystic gospel which is made up of a strange mixture of the two. Realize both, the outward and the inward; the objective and the subjective; Christ for us, and the Holy Spirit in us.

As at the first, so to the last, must this distinctiveness be observed, lest, having found peace in believing, you lose it by not holding the beginning of your confidence steadfast unto the end. "When I begin to doubt," writes one, "I quiet my doubts by going back to the place where I got them first quieted; I go and get peace again where I got it at the beginning; I do not sit down gloomily to must over my own faith or unbelief, but over the finished work of Immanuel; I don't try to reckon up my experiences, to prove that I once was a believer, but I believe again as I did before; I don't examine the evidence of the Spirit's work in me, but I think of the sure evidences which I have of Christ's work for me, in his death, and burial, and resurrection. This is the restoration of my peace. I had begun to look at other objects; I am now recalled from my wanderings to look at Jesus only."

Some of your difficulties seem to arise from a mixing up of the natural and the supernatural. Now the marvelous thing in conversion is, that while all is supernatural (being the entire work of the Holy Ghost), all is also natural. You are, perhaps unconsciously, expecting some miraculous elapse of heavenly power and brightness into your soul; something apart from divine truth, and from the working of man's powers of mind. You have been expecting faith to descend, like an angel from heaven, into our soul, and hope to be lighted up like a new star in your firmament. It is not so. Whilst the Spirit's work is beyond nature, it is not against nature. He displaces no faculty; he disturbs no mental process; he does violence to no part of our moral framework; he creates no new organ of thought or feeling. His office is to set all to rights within you; so that you never feel so calm, so true, so real, so perfectly natural, so much yourself, - as when He has taken possession of you in every part; and filled your whole man with his heavenly joy. Never do you feel so perfectly free, - less constrained and less mechanical, - in every faculty, as when he has "brought every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." The heavenly life imparted is liberty, and truth, and peace; it is the removal of bondage, and pain. So far from being a mechanical constraint, as some would represent, it is the removal of the iron chain with which guilt had bound the sinner. It acts like an army of liberation to a downtrodden country; like the warm breath of spring to the frost-fettered tree. For the entrance of true life, or living truth, into man's soul, must be liberty, not bondage. "The truth shall make you FREE."

Other difficulties arise out of confused ideas as to the proper order of truth. Misplaced truth is sometimes more injurious than actual error. In our statements of doctrine, we are to have regard to God's order of things, as well as to the things themselves. If you would solve the simplest question in arithmetic, the figures must not only be the proper ones, but they must be placed in proper order. So is it with the doctrines of the word of God. Some seem to fling them about in ill-assorted couples, or confused bundles, as if it mattered little to the hearer or reader what order was preserved, provided only certain truths were distinctly announced. Much trouble to the anxious spirit has arisen from this reckless confusion. A gospel in which election is placed first is not the gospel of the apostles; though certainly a gospel in which election id denied is still less the apostolic gospel. The true gospel is neither that Christ died for the elect, nor that he died for the whole world; for the excellency of the gospel does not lie in its announcement of the numbers to be saved, but in its proclamation of the great propitiation itself. Some who are supposed to be holding fast the form of sound words present us with a mere dislocation of the gospel, the different truths being so jumbled, that while they may be all there, they produce no result. They rather so neutralize each other as to prevent the sinner extracting from them the good news which, when rightly put together, they most assuredly contain. If the verses or chapters of the Epistle to the Romans were transposed or jumbled together, would it be the Epistle to the Romans, though every word were there? So, if, in teaching the gospel, we do not begin at the beginning; if, for instance, we tell the sinner what he has to do, before we tell him what God has done; if we tell him to examine his own heart before we tell him to study the cross of Christ; we take out the whole gladness from the glad tidings, and preach another gospel.

Do we not often, too, read the Bible as if it were a book of law, and not the revelation of grace? In so doing, we draw a cloud over it, and read it as a volume written by a hard master. So that a harsh tone is imparted in its words, and the legal element is made to obscure the evangelical. We are slow to read it as the expansion of the first gracious promise to man; as a revelation of the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; as the book of grace, specially written for us by the Spirit of grace. The law is in it, yet the Bible is not law, but gospel. As Mount Sinai rears its head, an isolated mass of hard, red granite, amid a thousand desert mountains of softer and less stern material, so does the law stand in the Bible; - a necessary part of it, - but not the characteristic of it; added because of transgressions till the seed should come. Yet have not our suspicious hearts darkened this book of light? Do we not often read it as the proclamation of a command to do, instead of a declaration of what the love of God has done?

Oh, strange! We believe in Satan's willingness to tempt and injure; but not in God's willingness to deliver and to save! Nay, more, we yield to our great enemy when he seduces into sin, and leads away from Christ and heaven; but we will not yield to our truest friend, when he draws us with the cords of a man, and with bands of love! We will not give God the credit for speaking truly when he speaks in tender mercy, and utters over the sinner the yearnings of his unfathomable pity. We listen, as if his words were hollow; as if he did not mean what he says; as if his messages of grace, instead of being the most thoroughly sincere that ever fell on human ears, were mere words of course.

There is nothing in the whole Bible to repel the sinner, and yet the sinner will not come! There is everything to draw and to win; yet the sinner stands aloof! Christ receiveth sinners; yet the sinner turns away! He yearns over them, weeps over them, as over Jerusalem; yet the sinner is unmoved! The heavenly compassion is unavailing; the infinite long-suffering touches not the stony heart, and the divine tears are thrown away. The Son of God stretches out his hands all the day long, but the outstretched hands are disregarded. All, all seems in vain to arrest the heedless, and to win back the wanderer.

Oh, the amount of divine love that has been expended upon this sad world, - that has been brought to bear upon the needy sons of men! We sometimes almost doubt whether it be true or possible, that God should lavish such a love on such a world. But the cross is the blessed memorial of the love, and that saying stands unchangeable: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." Sometimes, too, we say, What is the use of throwing away such love? Is not the earnestness of God disproportioned to the littleness of its object, - man? It would be so were this life all; were there no eternity, no heaven, no hell, no endless gladness, and no everlasting woe. But with such a destiny as man's; with an eternity like that which is in store for him, - can any amount of earnestness be too great? Can love or pity exceed their bounds? Can the joy or grief over a sinner saved or lost be exaggerated?

He, whose infinite mind knows what heaven is, knows what its loss must be to an immortal being. Can He be too much in earnest about its gain? He whose all-reaching foresight knows what hell is, in all its never-ending anguish, sees afar off, and fathoms the horrors of the lost soul, its weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for ever; its horrible sense of condemnation and immitigable woe; its cutting remorse, its too late repentance, its hopeless sighs, its bitter memories of earth's sunny hours; with all the thousand sadnesses that go to make up the sum total of a lost eternity! Can he, then, pity too much? Can he yearn too tenderly over souls that are madly bent on flinging themselves into a doom like this? Can he use words too strong, or too affectionate, in warning them against such a darkness, and such a devil, and such a hell? Can he put forth words too affectionate in beseeching them to make sure of such a heaven as his?

In the minds of some, the idea prevails, that sin quenches pity for the sinner, in the heart of God.

It is not so. That it shall do so hereafter, and that God will cease to pity the lost, is an awful truth. The lost soul's eternity will be an unpitied eternity of woe.

But, meanwhile, God's hatred of the sin is not hatred of the sinner. Nay, the greatness of his sin seems rather to deepen than to lessen the divine compassion. At least we may say that the increasing misery which increasing sin entails calls into new intensity the paternal pity of the God of the spirits of all flesh. "It grieves him at his heart." The farther the prodigal goes into the far country, the more do the yearnings of the father's heart go out after him in unfeigned compassion for the wretched wanderer, in his famine, and nakedness, and degradation, and hopeless grief.

No; sin does not quench the pitying love of God. The kindest words ever spoken to Israel were in the very height of their apostasy and rebellion. The most gracious invitation ever uttered by the Lord was to Capernaum, and Bethsaida, and Chorazin, "Come unto me." The most loving message ever sent to a Church was that to Laodicea, the worst of all the seven, "Behold I stand at the door and knock." It was Jerusalem, in her utmost extremity of guilt, and rebellion, and unbelief, that drew forth the tears of the Son of God. No; sin does not extinguish the love of God to the sinner. Many waters cannot quench it, nor can the floods drown it. From first to last, God pursues the sinner as he flies from him; pursues him not in hatred, but in love; pursues him not to destroy, but to pardon and to save.

God is not a man that he should lie. He means what he says, when he speaks in pity, as truly as when he speaks in wrath. His words are not mere random expressions, such as man often uses when uttering vague sentiment, or trying to produce an impression by exaggerated representations of his feelings. God's words are all true and real. You cannot exaggerate the genuine feeling which they contain; and to understand them as figures, is not only to convert them into unrealities, but to treat them as falsehoods. Let sinners take God's words as they are; the genuine expressions of the mind of that infinitely truthful Being, who never uses but the words of truth and soberness. He is sovereign; but that sovereignty is not at war with grace; nor does it lead to insincerity of speech, as some seem to think it does. Whether we can reconcile the sovereignty with the pity, it matters not. Let us believe them both, because both are revealed in the Bible. Nor let us ever resort to an explanation of the words of pity, which would imply that they were not sincerely spoken; and that if a sinner took them too literally and too simply, he would be sorely disappointed; - finding them at last mere exaggerations, if not empty air.

Oh, let us learn to treat God as not merely the wisest, and the highest, and the holiest, but as the most truthful of all beings. Let the heedless sinner hear his truthful warnings, and tremble; for they shall all be fulfilled. Let the anxious sinner listen to his truthful words of grace, and be at peace. We need to be told this. For there is in the minds of many, a feeling of sad distrust as to the sincerity of the divine utterances, and a proneness to evade their plain and honest meaning. Let us do justice, not merely to the love, but to the truthfulness, of God. There are many who need to be reminded of this; - yes, many, who do not seem to be at all aware of their propensity to doubt even the simple truthfulness of the God of truth.

God is love. Yes, God is love. Can such a God be suspected of insincerity in the declarations of his long-suffering, yearning compassion toward the most rebellious and impenitent of the sons of men? That there is such a thing as righteousness; that there is such a place as hell; that there are such beings as lost angels and lost men, we know to be awful certainties. But, however terrible and however true these things may be, they cannot cast the slightest doubt upon the sincerity of the great oath which God has sworn before heaven and earth, that he has "no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live;" nor in the least blunt the solemn edge of his gracious entreaty, "TURN YE, TURN YE, FOR WHY WILL YE DIE?"

[1] Titus iii.5 [2] Rom. iv.4

[3] Gal. ii.16

[4] Luke xviii 11

[5] Jer. ii.37

[6] Psalm xxxii.2

[7] Job xxii.21

[8] James ii.19

[9] John xiv. 8,9

[10] Job xxxiii. 23

[11] Is. xiv. 21

[12] 1 John iii.16

[13] 1 John iv. 10

[14] 1 Pet. v.10

[15] 1 Pet. ii.3

[16] Heb. ix. 9-14

[17] Jer. vi. 14

[18] Is. xiv. 21

[19] Ezek. xviii.4

[20] Heb. ix.7

[21] Rev. i.5. It is interesting to notice, in connection with this point, that the old Scotch terms in law for acquitting and condemning were "cleanse" and "fyle" (that is, defile). In the assize held upon the faithful ministers of the Church of Scotland in 1606, it was put to the court whether these said ministers should be "clenzed" or "fyled," and the chancellor "declared that they were fyled by manliest votes." See Calderwood, vol. vi. p. 388

[22] We must make a great difference between God's word and the word of man. A man's word is a little sound which flieth into the air and soon vanisheth; but the word of God is greater than heaven and earth, yea, it is greater than death and hell, for it is the power of God, and remaineth everlastingly. Therefore we ought diligently to learn God's word, and we must know certainly and believe that God himself speaketh with us." Luther

[23] As a good memory means the correct remembrance of the very things that have occurred; so the essence of a right faith is a belief of the right thing. And as bad memory is refreshed or corrected by presenting again and again the objects to be remembered, so a wrong faith (or unbelief) requires to have the full testimony of God to be presented to the soul.

[24] There is a tendency among some to undervalue doctrine, to exact morality at the expense of theology, and to deny the importance of a sound creed. I do not doubt that a sound creed has often covered an unsound life, and that much creed, little faith, is true of multitudes. But when we hear it said, "Such a man is far gone in error, but his heart is in its right place; he disbelieves the substitution on the cross, but he rests on Christ himself," - we wonder, and ask, What then was the Bible written for? It may be (if this be the case) a bood of thought like Bacon's Novum Organum, but it is no standard of truth, no infallible expression of the mind of an infallible being! The solemnity with which that book affirms the oneness of truth, and the awful severity with which it condemns every departure from the truth, as a direct attack on God himself, show us the danger of saying that a man's heart may be in its right place though his head contains a creed or error. Faith and unbelief are not mere mental manipulations, to which no moral value is attached. Doctrine is not a mere form of thought or phase of opinion. Within what limits such might have been the case had there been no revelation, I do not say. But, with a revelation, all mental transactions as to truth and error assume a moral character, with which the highest responsibility is connected; their results have a moral value, and are linked with consequences of the most momentous kind. On true doctrine rests the worship of the true God. If, then, Johovah is a jealous God, not giving his glory to another, unbelief must be one of the worst of sins; and error not only a deadly poison to the soul receiving it, but hateful to God as blasphemy against himself, and the same in nature as the blind theologies of paganism, on which is built the worship of Baal, or Brahm, or Jupiter. The real root of all unbelief is atheism. Man's guilty conscience modifies this, turns it into idolatry; or his sentimental nature modifies it, and turns it into pantheism. The fool's "No God" is really the root of all unbelief.

[25] Yet let me notice a way of speaking of this sovereignty which is not scriptural. Some tell the anxious sinner that the first thing he has to do, in order to faith, is to submit to this sovereignty, and that when he has done so, God will give him faith! This is far wrong surely. Submission to the divine sovereignty is one of the highest results of faith, - how can it be preparatory to faith? The sinner is told that he cannot believe of himself, but he can submit himself to God's sovereignty! He cannot do the lowest thing, but he can do the highest; - nay, and he must begin by doing the highest, in order to prepare himself for doing the lowest! It is faith, not unbelief, that will thus submit; and yet the unconverted sinner is recommended to do, and to do in unbelief, the highest act of faith! This surely is turning theology upside down.

[26] It is not wrong to love God for what he has done for us. Not to do so, would be the very baseness of ingratitude. To love God purely for what he is, is by some spoken of as the highest kind of love, into which enters no element of self. It is not so. For in that case, you are actuated by the pleasure of loving; and this pleasure of loving an infinitely lovable and glorious Being, of necessity introduces self. Besides, to say that we are to love God solely for what he is, and not for what he had done, is to make ingratitude an essential element of pure love. David's love showed itself in not forgetting God's benefits. But this pure love soars beyond David's and finds it a duty to be unthankful, lest perchance some selfish element mingle itself with its superhuman, superangelic purity.

[27] How reasonable, writes one, that we should just do that one small act which God requires of us, go and tell him the truth. I used to go and say, Lord, I am a sinner, do have mercy on me; but as I did not feel all this, I began to see that I was taking a lie in my hand, trying to persuade the Almighty that I felt things which I did not feel. These prayers and confessions brought me no comfort, no answer, so at last I changed my tone, and began to tell the truth - Lord, I do not feel myself a sinner; I do not feel that I need mercy. Now, all was right; the sweetest reception, the most loving encouragements, the most refreshing answers, this confession of truth brought down from heaven. I did not get anything by declaring myself a sinner, for I felt it not; but I obtained everything by confessing that I did not see myself one."