PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINHRY 
 
 BY 
 
 ]V[its. Rle^^andcp Ppoudfit. 
 BV 4501 .P5 183r 
 Philip, Robert, 1791-1858. ' 
 Christian experience I 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE; 
 
 OR, A. 
 
 ^uit^e to tifte WtvpUxcts, 
 
 / 
 
 BY ROBERT PHILIP, 
 
 Of Maberly Chapel. 
 
 ^erontr iStrition. 
 
 I PHOi LD know bow to speak a word in season to liiin that 
 is weary." — Isaiah. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR, 
 
 AND SOLD BV THE 
 
 iSoolt S»ocwt5 for l^romoting l^eligious i^tiiobjlftjgr. 
 
 19, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1831. 
 
THOMAS CHALLIS, Esq, 
 
 TREASURER 
 
 OF 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION SOCIETY, 
 
 THESE ESSAYS 
 
 ARE INSCRIBED 
 AS A TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Th e following simple, and almost conversational 
 Essays, are the substance .of actual conversations with 
 the Perplexed. 
 
 In- the Preface to the First Edition it was said, 
 " How far they will meet the case of that class, at 
 large, the Author does not venture to conjecture." 
 Conjecture is now needless; they have proved a 
 " Guide" to many. It would evince ingratitude to 
 God, if not insensibility, to conceal this pleasing fact. 
 
 To his Fathers and Brethren, who have adopted the 
 " Guide," as a manual for the Perplexed, the Author 
 feels himself under great obligation. Their sanction 
 is not the least cause of its success. And, should the 
 companion to this work, " Communion vnth God, or a 
 Guide to the Devotional " obtain, or deserve the same 
 sanction and success, he will be encouraged to perse- 
 vere in a " line of things," which, at first, did not seem 
 to be his "own." For it was not in this " way," he 
 expected to *' glorify God." 
 
 R. P. 
 
 May field Terrace, Dalston. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 THE WORK OF THE LAW UPON THE CONSCIENCE 1 
 
 II. 
 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT ON THE HEART . 20 
 
 III. 
 THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT . . . 39 
 
 IV. 
 THE SPECIAL FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT ... 55 
 
 V. 
 
 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH . . ^ . . 72 
 
 VI. 
 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD AND THE LAMB . 88 
 
VIU. CONTENTS. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Page 
 THE HOPE OF SALVATION THE BEST SAFE- 
 GUARD OF THE UNDERSTANDING AGAINST 
 ERROR, AND OF THE HEART AGAINST ilN 105 
 
 VIIT. 
 DEVOTIONAL SELF EXAMINATION . . .123 
 
 IX. 
 THE TEMPTATIONS AND FIERY DARTS OF SATAN 14i> 
 
 X. 
 
 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FEELING 
 
 AND ENJOYMENT l3> 
 
 XI. 
 
 CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING . . . • 172 
 
 XII. 
 SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS .... 180 
 
 XIII. 
 EXPERIMENTAL MAXIMS . . . .200 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 No. I. 
 THE WORK OF THE LAW UPON THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 *' Without the Law, sin is dead.'' This is 
 true, both of the Moral Law of Duty and of the 
 Evangelical Law of Faith : for until their autho- 
 rity and spirituality are understood and felt, we 
 do not understand the evil of sin, nor feel the 
 power of it. Like Paul before his conversion, 
 we are ^'^ alive, without the law:" not afraid 
 of perishing, nor at all affected by the plagues 
 of our hearts : not seriously displeased with our- 
 selves, nor conscious of the displeasure of God. 
 
 It is humiliating to look back . on this state 
 of mind. We acted and felt as if there had 
 been no law at all, or as if there had been no 
 more law than we ourselves chose to admit. 
 We obeyed no farther than suited our own in- 
 clinations, and no longer than suited our con- 
 
2 THE WOKK OF THE LAW 
 
 venience. And yet, awful infatuation ! we were 
 neither afraid nor ashamed. Indeed, we never 
 paused to consider seriously the divine law or 
 its sanctions ; but judged of right and wrong by 
 public opinion. The world, not God, was our 
 lawgiver; and accordingly, when we did not 
 incur blame from others, we suspected none 
 from God; and, when any part of our conduct 
 was condemned by others, we even took for 
 granted that He would judge more charitably 
 and mercifully than our neighbours did. Thus 
 we had scarcely one scriptural idea of the nature 
 or the authority of the Eternal law. Accord- 
 ingly, whilst thus *' without the law," or without 
 a right sense of its obligations and sanctions, 
 we were quite "alive;" both fearless and gay; 
 neither self-condemned in our own minds, nor 
 aware that God had condemned us. *'»Sm," 
 also, " was deadf'' whilst we were thus ignorant 
 of the spirituality and strictness of the Divine 
 law. Not, indeed, that sin itself was dead in 
 our hearts : far from it ! But such were our 
 slight views of the evil of sin, that it might have 
 been dead, for any uneasiness or alarm it occa- 
 sioned within us. It did not pain our hearts nor 
 
UPON THB CONSCIENCE. 3 
 
 awaken our consciences: it left us at *'ease" 
 even "in Zion," and threw no cloud on our 
 spirits or our prospects. We looked as safe and 
 smiling as if we had had no sin, or as if sin 
 involved no punishment. Thus sin was virtually 
 dead, whilst we were inattentive to the demands 
 and denunciations of the Divine law. 
 
 Nor was this all. Whilst without scriptural 
 views of the holiness and justness of the law, we 
 were not aware of the power which sin had over 
 us, nor of the strength of our love to it. The 
 evil principles of our hearts did not show all 
 their evil, because we laid no powerful con- 
 straint upon them. We had never tried to be 
 very good, and therefore we did not discover that 
 our hearts were very bad. Indeed, we thought 
 better of our hearts than of our lives. The reason 
 is obvious : we let our hearts have their own way, 
 and allowed them to think and feel as they were 
 inclined. Whatever religious restraints we laid 
 upon our lips or our hands, we imposed none 
 upon our thoughts : they might range and revel 
 as they chose, if they only kept clear of painful 
 and spiritual subjects. It was, therefore, un- 
 likely — indeed impossible — that our hearts should 
 
4 THE WORK OF THE LAW 
 
 manifest all their enmity to the laws of God, 
 wbilst these laws were not applied to them. We 
 did not set them to try to love or fear God : we 
 did not call on them to consider divine and 
 eternal things seriously : we gave them no tasks 
 in devotion, meditation, or self-control. In a 
 word, we did not at all trouble our hearts to be 
 religious ; and therefore they did not trouble us 
 by any great opposition to the few religious 
 duties we performed ; but let us have our own 
 way, so long as they had their own way. And 
 this was one chief reason why our hopes of final 
 safety kept " alive," whilst we were without the 
 law : we thought well of our hearts, because they 
 offered no marked opposition to the morals or 
 the religion which we attended to. We attended 
 to no more than was barely sufficient to save us 
 from being called irreligious ; and the pride of 
 the heart allowed that degree of duty at all times, 
 and, on solemn occasions, a little more : whereas 
 if we had tried to set our hearts to the serious 
 consideration and the spiritual discharge of all 
 duty, they would have soon shown that they were 
 *' hearts of stone." 
 
 This is indeed a humiliating review of our 
 
UPON THE CONSCIENCE. .) 
 
 former habits of acting and judging ; but it is 
 well both to take it, and to declare it, because 
 the declaration of it may prove useful to others. 
 To ourselves such a retrospect mvM be useful, 
 were it only to enable us to discern the change 
 which has taken place in our views and feelings 
 on this subject. 
 
 New we can truly say, that however we were 
 alive, or sin dead, whilst we did not allow the 
 Law to speak to our consciences, — " when the 
 commandment came, sin revived, and we diedJ*^ 
 Our ill-grounded hopes of heaven, and our good 
 opinion of our own hearts, fell dead before the 
 scriptural fact, that the Eternal law demands and 
 admits nothing short of perfect obedience. The 
 solemn denunciation, " Cursed is he who con- 
 tinueth not in all things written in the book of 
 the law, to do them,'' awoke us at once to our 
 guilt and danger ; and the declaration, that " by 
 the deeds of the law, no flesh living shall be 
 justified,'' confounded us. We were thus re- 
 duced to a complete dilemma : we saw that we 
 had not kept the law ; we felt that we were 
 unable to keep it perfectly ; and now we under- 
 stood that, however well we might keep it in 
 B 2 
 
6 THE WORK OF THE LAW 
 
 future, the obedience would not atone for our 
 past sins. 
 
 We knew not what to do, or what to think, 
 when these solemn facts flashed upon our minds ; 
 they were so unlike all our former opinions. 
 We had, indeed, heard and read them, but they 
 had not struck nor startled us before. How 
 could they ? We had never seriously weighed 
 their import, nor suspected their application to 
 ourselves : and now that we saw both, it seemed 
 too late to remedy our mistakes. For what 
 could we do with a law which condemned us for 
 past sins, and would not allow present duty to 
 make up for them ? We were willing to reform, 
 and to lead a new life ; but what was the use of 
 doing so, if the change could not save our souls ? 
 Thus there seemed no encouragement to do 
 better, and no benefit to be derived from it. 
 
 Our case now began to wear a hopeless aspect, 
 and would have been held desperate, had not our 
 floating ideas abojat the mercy of God, and the 
 merits of Jesus Christ, kept despair in check. 
 We had never indeed examined, with any care, 
 the nature of divine mercy, or the design of the 
 Saviour's death ; but we took for granted that. 
 
UPON THE CONSCIENCE. 7 
 
 of course, they were intended to help us in some 
 way — and no way, that we knew of then, seemed 
 so likely as their making up for our defects, if 
 we did our best to live well in future. Accord- 
 ingly, under this hope, we began to reform, and 
 tried to repent. We determined to confess, 
 very humbly, all our past sins and shortcomings, 
 and Jo be very devout in our religious duties. 
 But, lo ! to our surprise, our hearts would not 
 Jix nor feel ! They wandered in prayer, and 
 wavered in all their pious resolutions — they in- 
 vented excuses for the neglect of some duties, 
 and soon tired of others. This we had not 
 looked for ; but, indeed, calculated that our 
 hearts would follow up all the dictates of our 
 consciences. What was to be done ? We de- 
 termined to mader their aversion to spiritual 
 things ; to force them to be penitent and devo- 
 tional. But all would not do; they actually 
 became worse, instead of better, the more we 
 tried to subject them to the authority of the 
 Divine law. 
 
 Thus it was ; *' when the commandment 
 came" home to our hearts, demanding sincerity 
 and spirituality, <' sin revived.'^ 
 
« THE WORK OF THE LAW 
 
 The principles of the carnal mind flew up in 
 arms, when the power of godliness attempted 
 to sit down on the throne of the heart. Then 
 our pride objected to the humility, our sloth to 
 the diligence, our passions to the self-denial, 
 and our tempers to the strictness, of true holi- 
 ness: the whole soul shrunk back from the 
 '* yoke" of Christ, or tried to break it ; and the 
 real, though secret, language of the heart was, 
 ** we will not have this man to reign over us.^"* 
 Thus we found that our hearts were as unwilling 
 to obey Christ fully, as they were unable to keep 
 the law perfectly ; and therefore the Gospel (as 
 we understood it then, and as some understand 
 it now) left us as hopeless as the law had done. 
 And in this way, how could the Saviour be ex- 
 pected to make up the defects of a heartless 
 piety ? We felt that our religion was all forced 
 work, and likely to continue to be so ; and as 
 our opinion of the work of Christ was, that he 
 only helped out those who did their best; of 
 course, we had nothing to expect from him, 
 because nothing to give him, now that our hearts 
 seemed to grow worse instead of better. In a 
 word, we could make nothinsr of the law or 
 
UPON THE CONSCIENCE. 9 
 
 Gospel, but despair or discouragement in our 
 own case. The law had condemned us, and it 
 seemed inevitable that the Gospel would do so 
 too. 
 
 In this condition, — convinced of the import- 
 ance of personal religion, but feeling it almost 
 impossible to be religious ; alive to the value of 
 the sonl, but seeing no way of securing its sal- 
 vation, — many are kept on the rack of suspense, 
 and some on the rack of utter despair. And 
 when such distress of soul falls in, as it fre- 
 quently does, with a nervous frame of body, or 
 a melancholy cast of mind, the suffering is 
 dreadful — indeed dangerous; for the tendency 
 of such minds is to indulge hopelessness. Ac- 
 cordingly some do nothing else but "write 
 bitter things" against themselves ; setting them- 
 selves down as certainly lost beyond redemption, 
 and interpreting all their agonizing feelings into 
 marks of reprobation. Under this horrid per- 
 suasion, they give up prayer entirely, and feel 
 inclined to have done with the word of God, 
 and the house of God, for ever. Indeed, they 
 would do so, were it not that they cannot aban- 
 don either for any length of time. There is 
 
10 THE WORK OF THE LAW 
 
 some fascination about the means oH grace, 
 which draws even the hopeless back to them, 
 in spite of despair, sooner or later. They may 
 say that they look for no good from any means, 
 and that they are sure to find none; but still 
 they do " look again" to the temple of God, and 
 cannot tear themselves finally away from it, nor 
 utterly forget that salvation which seems lost 
 to them. The truth is, despair is not natural 
 to the human mind ; and therefore, although Jits 
 of it may be indulged frequently, the intervals 
 of it are often employed in re-examining the 
 grounds of hope, and admitting a *' may be," 
 or " peradventure," of salvation. The question, 
 *' Who can tell ?" occasionally leads away 
 the thoughts from the dark side to the bright 
 side of it, and fixes them there long enough to 
 brighten them a little. And although it seems, 
 to the soul, almost sinful to admit the faintest 
 ray of hope in its own case, and almost a duty 
 to banish it at once; still it is admitted and 
 retained from time to time, until it gradually 
 leads to the resolution of inquiring more fully 
 into the way of salvation. 
 
 Now, when this is the case, and the mind is 
 
UPON THE CONSCIENCE. 11 
 
 willing to examine the matter calmly and deli- 
 berately, it is well to begin with the example of 
 Paul ; for God showed mercy to him, that he 
 might show in him " a pattern of all long-suf- 
 fering to them who should afterwards believe." 
 Besides, as the Law has had the same effect on 
 you which it had on Paul, it certainly is not 
 impossible that the Gospel should have the 
 same effect on you that it had on him. Now, 
 you can truly say with him in the former case, 
 " I was alive without the law once; but when the 
 commandment came, sin revived, and I died." 
 Yes; you are sure that you are dead to all hope 
 of being saved by the law now, and that your 
 hearts are far worse than you could have ima- 
 gined them to be. Well ; how did Paul act and 
 judge, when by the law he became dead to the 
 law ? The shock which thus shook his self- 
 righteousness to death, must, you are aware, 
 have been tremendous ! Accordingly " he was 
 three days without sight, and neither did eat nor 
 drink.'' But he prayed I Yes : neither his guilt 
 nor his misery led him to restrain prayer before 
 God; nor did they prevent him from believing 
 the Gospel, when it was preached unto him by 
 
12 THE WORK OF THE LAW 
 
 Ananias. He gave " all acceptation" to the 
 "saying," as soon as he knew it to be " a faithful 
 saying, that Christ Jesus came into the world to 
 save sinners." Although he felt himself to be 
 the *' chief" of sinners, he did not hesitate to 
 believe in Christ for his own salvation. He 
 believed on Christ, that he might be justified by 
 the faith of Christ: and being justified by faith, 
 he had peace with God. Now this was acting 
 wisely ; and thus should all act, whose hopes of 
 salvation by the works of the law, have been 
 slain by the curse of the law. 
 
 If, however, Paul's case be thought too pecu- 
 liar to argue from, — one thing is certain ; we 
 have the same Gospel, in the Scriptures, which 
 reheved his mind, and became the power of God 
 unto his salvation. Nor is this all : we have also 
 the command of God to believe it for our own 
 salvation ; and his express assurance, that, be- 
 lieving it will save us. If, then, all our old 
 hopes are crushed to death by the law, why not 
 embrace the new and better hopes which this 
 glorious Gospel sets before us ? 
 
 *' Why not ?" some are ready to say ; " they 
 are not intended for me: they belong to the 
 
UPON THE CONSCIENCE. 13 
 
 penitent ; and my heart is hard ! — they belong 
 to the humble ; and my heart is proud ! — they 
 belong to the believing ; and 1 cannot beheve !" 
 
 Cannot believe! Why? What is it* that 
 you cannot believe? Let us see what it really 
 is ; and why you cannot believe it : for it may 
 be that it is something not necessary to be 
 believed at present ; yea, it may be something 
 which is not your duty to believe just now. 
 Do not, therefore, fly off from the Gospel by 
 a hasty conclusion that you cannot believe it : 
 you do not seem to understand it yet ; and, 
 therefore, the difficulty of believing it may not 
 be so great as you may imagine — at least, not of 
 the same kind as you suppose. 
 
 What, then, is it that you cannot beheve? 
 Yes! what is it? For there is reason to sus- 
 pect that it is either something which it is not 
 necessary to begin with ; or something which 
 ought not to be believed until *Uhe truth" is 
 believed, with which God has graciously con- 
 nected the promise of salvation. 
 
 The answers to these pointed questions will 
 of course, vary according to the degree in which 
 those who are interested in them are acquainted 
 c 
 
14 THE WORK OF THE LAW 
 
 with the current opinions and perplexities of 
 serious people. Hence some will say, **Ah! 
 but I cannot believe that Christ died for me." 
 Now*, be not startled when I say, *' No wonder ! 
 for how could you believe what is not re- 
 vealed?'' And it is not revealed that he died 
 for you individually. What is revealed is, that 
 he died for sinners ; and that you do not dis- 
 believe. But you say, **As I cannot regard 
 myself as one of the sinners for whom Christ 
 died, my believing that he died for sinners can 
 do me no good." Why not ? Who told you 
 that the belief of this truth could do you no 
 good ? Whoever told you so, the Scriptures did 
 not. They say (whatever you think), that who- 
 soever believeth Jesus Christ to be the Son of 
 God, and the only Saviour, shall never perish, 
 but have eternal life : yea, they warrant every 
 one who cordially believes these facts concern- 
 ing Christ, to beheve also that Christ loved hirrij 
 and gave himself for him. 
 
 This meets your case, if you understood it : 
 but you are prepared to start objections which 
 will prove that you do not understand it clearly 
 yet. "Why," you say, "if merely believing 
 
UPON THE CONSCIENCE. 15 
 
 that Christ is the Son of God, and the only 
 Saviour, were enough to warrant me to regard 
 myself as a believer, it would follow that I was 
 one even whilst I was careless; for even then 
 I believed all this." Not exactly; for you 
 could not have continued careless, if you had 
 really believed it all. However, if you will call 
 your former opinion of Christ, believing; it 
 was certainly not believing because God had 
 spoken : for it is evident, from your own con- 
 fessions, that, whilst you were careless, you did 
 not examine the law or the Gospel. If, there- 
 fore, your opinions of the person and work of 
 Christ happened to be, upon the whole, scrip- 
 tural, they were so without your knowledge ; 
 for if you never sat down to form them by the 
 word of God, it is not owing to your care that 
 they were at all correct. Besides, you did not 
 believe what you did, on the Divine authority ; 
 but because others believed it. Be honest : you 
 just believed what you found current in the 
 world ; and would have believed what others 
 did, if it had been the very opposite of what 
 it is. Now, however this falling in with 
 
16 THE WORK OF THE LAW 
 
 public opinion may be called believing, it cer- 
 tainly is not believing God ; and therefore ought 
 not to be appealed to in reply to the scriptural 
 fact, that the cordial belief of the Divine tes- 
 timony concerning the person and woik of 
 Christ, is saving faith. 
 
 Besides, that testimony is revealed, that it may 
 be believed for the salvation of the soul ; and, 
 for that purpose, you did not, you could not, 
 believe it, whilst you were careless. How could 
 you ? Whilst you were without the law in 
 your conscience, your hopes were alive without 
 the Gospel. You felt in no danger of perish- 
 ing : you took for granted that you were sure 
 of salvation at last, by some means. Whatever, 
 therefore, you believed about Christ then, it 
 was not for salvation. Accordingly, you never 
 thought so, nor at all imagined that your opi- 
 nions about the Saviour had any connection 
 with your supposed safety. What you relied 
 on then, was the good you were doing, or in- 
 tended to do; and not any thing that Christ 
 had done. Indeed, even now you do not see 
 much beneficial connection between believing 
 
UPON THE CONSCIENCE. 17 
 
 and salvation, — I mean, you are quite at a 
 loss to comprehend how the belief of the 
 Gospel can secure an interest in the salvation of 
 God. On all these accounts, therefore, it is 
 wrong, and can only increase your perplexity, 
 to call your former opinions about Christ, belief. 
 They were like your former opinions about the 
 law — too vague and superficial to affect your 
 heart. 
 
 But now, your belief of the Divine law will 
 enable you to understand v/hat it is to believe 
 the Gospel aright, and to see how faith in Christ 
 brings both hope and holiness into the mind. 
 You know and feel that you now believe the law 
 of God : of that you have no doubt ; and you 
 are equally convinced that you neither believed 
 nor understoodit, whilst you were careless. And 
 were any one to tell you now, that he had often 
 heard you call it a holy and just law, long before 
 you began to think seriously ; and were he to 
 argue from this that you believed it then, you 
 would say at once, " Ah ! these were mere words 
 of course ; for I never weighed their meaning : I 
 just called the law what others called it ; and if 
 c 2 
 
18 THE WORK OF THE LAW 
 
 they understood what they said, I did not. If 
 ever I thought of its hoHness, it did not convince 
 me that nothing short of perfect obedience could 
 meet its demands ; and whatever I thought of its 
 justice, I did not beheve that I was condemned 
 by it. Now, as this is the truth of God concern- 
 ing his law, it is self-evident that I did not be- 
 lieve, at that time, his testimony on the subject. 
 Indeed, such was my unbelief then, that I was in 
 reality * without the law.' " 
 
 Thus you would reply to any one who at- 
 tempted to confound your former professions 
 with your present belief of the law. Well ; it is 
 your present belief of it that creates your present 
 fear of perishing, and keeps up the conviction in 
 your mind that you cannot save yourself. Just 
 because you believe that the Eternal law says 
 that you are " condemned already" for what you 
 have done against it, you ai e afraid ; and well 
 you may ! But now, the everlasting Gospel de- 
 clares as plainly what Christ has done to satisfy 
 the law, and to redeem sinners from its curse ; 
 and it is just as true that he died to redeem 
 sinners from its curse, as that you are under its 
 
UPON TFIE CONSCIENCE. 19 
 
 curse. Seeing, therefore, you believe the truth 
 which condemns, why not beheve the truth which 
 can save you ? You need salvation — you wish 
 for it ; and would give worlds to obtain eternal 
 redemption from the curse : well ; it is offered 
 and promised to you, if you will believe in Christ 
 for it ; for " it is of faith, that it might be of 
 grace." 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 No. II. 
 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT ON THE HEART. 
 
 There is something so very grand and solemn 
 in the bare idea of being " taught" by the Holy 
 Spirit — " led" by Him — " quickened" by Him 
 — '* born again" by Him !— that we can hardly 
 wonder that we should feel both afraid and 
 unable, at first, to believe that any change for 
 the better, which we have experienced under the 
 Gospel, amounts to the work of the Spirit. For 
 to believe this, in our own case, would be to 
 admit that we are really converted to God, and 
 thus already the children of God, and heirs of 
 the kingdom of heaven. But some, although no 
 longer what they were in heart or habits, are not 
 prepared to draw this conclusion in their own 
 case. Indeed, it is not at once, nor is it often 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT, &C. 21 
 
 soon, that any one admits *« the full assurance of 
 hope" in his own case. It more frequently hap- 
 pens that those who are most renewed in the 
 spirit of their mind, are most afraid to regard 
 themselves as " born again." It is with the 
 serious, in regard to the regeneration of their 
 souls, as with parents, in regard to the recovery 
 of an only child from a dangerous illness : the 
 physician may pronounce it out of danger, and 
 the symptoms of convalescence may be self-evi- 
 dent to every one but them, and they may not 
 actually dispute the general opinion ; but having 
 again and again given up their darling, and felt 
 sure that it could not recover, they are afraid of 
 flattering themselves, and *' slow of heart to be- 
 lieve" that any signs, however good, are proofs 
 of safety. So it is with those of us who are 
 feelingly alive to the value of our souls, and intent 
 on their salvation : they may be really *« passing 
 from death to hfe ;" but we are so afraid of that 
 ** death," and so affected by that " life," that we 
 can hardly beHeve it possible that our souls can 
 escape the former, or obtain the latter. It seems 
 too good news to be true — too bright a hope to 
 be admitted in our own case. Even when we 
 
22 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 try to admit it, or venture to whisper to our- 
 selves, that surely a Divine change is taking 
 place within us, the thought creates such a flow 
 of feeling, and flutter of spirits, that we know not 
 what to think : and, being equally afraid of pre- 
 suming or despairing, we come to no final deter- 
 mination ; but wait to see how the good work 
 will go on. 
 
 Now, it is well to be cautious upon such a 
 question as *' the renewing of the Holy Ghost,^* 
 for all changes of feeling are not Divine changes. 
 Indeed, there is but too much reason to fear that 
 many conclude too hastily in their own favour, 
 and mistake conviction for conversion. But whilst 
 this melancholy fact should teach us prudence, it 
 should not be allowed to divert us from the ques- 
 tion of our own regeneration : that point can be 
 ascertained and settled upon scriptural grounds ; 
 and therefore it ought no more to be hushed up, 
 than to be hurried over. We are " born again," 
 or we are not ; and, as uncertainty on the point 
 can do no good, it is both our duty and interest 
 to bring the matter to an issue. 
 
 Perliaps the best way of doing this is, to re- 
 consider the necessity of experiencing the work 
 
ON THE HEART. 23 
 
 of tlie Spirit, in order that we may see clearly the 
 consequences of being without the Spirit. " Now, 
 if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is 
 none of his." JVbne of his/ Solemn fact ! None 
 of His ! Whose, then, is he who has not the 
 Spirit ? The law says, *' He is my prisoner, and 
 under the curse, whether he believe it or not." 
 Satan says, *' He is my victim, whether he feel 
 it or not." The world says, "He is my slave, 
 whether he own it or not." Dreadful condition! 
 If I am not Christ's, I am under the curse of the 
 Eternal law, and in the power of Satan ! And I 
 am not Christ's, if I am a stranger to the work 
 of the Spirit. 
 
 The moment we reflect thus, we feel that the 
 question, " Have ye received the Holy Ghost?" 
 is one which should not be left unsettled from 
 year to year, nor even from month to month. 
 Let us, therefore, put it to ourselves now, and 
 in connexion with the solemn assurance that we 
 are not Christ's, if we have not experienced 
 something of the work of his Spirit. And if, in 
 this awful connexion, there is some danger of 
 admitting almost any thing to be " the fruits of 
 the Spirit," rather tlian admit that we are in the 
 
24 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 power of Satan, let us pray earnestly that we may 
 not be tempted to self-deception : but, at the 
 same time, let not that danger prevent nor in- 
 timidate us from going into the question ; for, 
 although a solemn one, it is also a simple one, 
 if it be kept close to the word of God, and not 
 mixed up with the extravagant or extraneous 
 things, which the fancy of some, and the phi- 
 losophy of others, have heaped around the work 
 of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Now, one thing equally simple and certain is, 
 that the office of the Holy Spirit is to glorify the 
 Saviour — to exalt and endear him in our estima- 
 tion. And whatever be the nature or the degree 
 of the Spirit's operations in the mind, the design 
 of them is to render Christ *' precious" to the 
 soul. If, therefore, the Saviour is become alto- 
 gether lovely in our estimation, and his atone- 
 ment altogether dear to us — dear, because of its 
 glory, fulness, freeness, and holy influence, — we 
 are not altogether strangers to the work of the 
 Spirit. Nor, if the Saviour is all and all, in all 
 the hope we cherish, is it of any real consequence 
 whether or not the way in which he became so 
 to our souls, is the same by which others have 
 
ON THE HEART. 25 
 
 been led to love him and rely on him. The 
 real question is not. How was I brought to the 
 Saviour ? but, Am I brought to him for pardon 
 and sanctification ? Some have been brought 
 suddenly, and others gradually, to the Cross for 
 refuge ; some have been driven to it by the 
 terrors of the law, and others drawn by the ten- 
 derness of the Lord ; some were brought very 
 early in life, and others very late : but as they 
 are all brought to rely on Christ for a holy sal- 
 vation, the difference of the time and manner of 
 bringing them does not affect their safety. Neither 
 the time nor the manner of bringino; sinners to 
 Christ, but their being brought to Christ, is the 
 cause of their salvation. Paul's conversion was 
 sudden and miraculous ; Timothy's was gradual, 
 and the effect of an early religious education : 
 but Timothy was as safe as Paul, when like Paul, 
 he laid hold on Christ for eternal life. And 
 if the heart of the Philippian jailor, instead of 
 being as it were torn open by terror, had been 
 " opened" as the heart of Lydia was, gently as a 
 rose-bud is unfolded by the sun, the jailor would 
 have found the same welcome at the Cross which 
 she did; In like manner, had Lydia beeii plunged 
 
 D 
 
26 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 into despair, as he was at first, it would liave 
 availed her nothing, if she had not, like him, 
 fled to Christ. It was, therefore, not that in 
 which their experience differed, but that in 
 which it agreed — their reliance on Christ alone, 
 which secured their welcome and safety. Paul 
 understood this ; and, accordingly, he did not 
 reckon Lydia nor Timothy less truly converted 
 to God, than the jailor or himself; nor did they 
 themselves doubt their own conversion, because 
 the manner of it differed from his. In common 
 with all saints, they were glorying only in the 
 Cross of Christ ; and as they knew that to be the 
 only refuge, and a certain refuge to all who fled 
 to it, they kept to it, without any reference to 
 the way in which othei's were brought to it. 
 
 Now, as there was such a marked and im- 
 mense difference in the manner of their conver- 
 sion, similar differences may be expected still ; 
 and, as in their case, without at all invalidating 
 the reality of the conversion itself. For, in our 
 case also, the real question of experience on this 
 point is — Is Christ become all my salvation ? and 
 7iot, Have I felt all the alarm and horror of soul 
 which some have experienced ? For, if I have 
 
ON THE HEART. 27 
 
 felt that, whatever it was, which has led me to 
 commit my soul to Christ for salvation, I could 
 have done nothing more than this, whatever I 
 had felt. They have done nothing more, who 
 have suffered most : and although, of course, the 
 terrors of conscience led them to commit their 
 souls into the hands of Christ with more prompt- 
 ness and solemnity than I did ; still, if 1 did it 
 with sincerity^ my welcome is equally sure : for, 
 after all, it is the sincerity of faith in Him, and 
 not the strength of feeling, which ensures a 
 welcome ; and what has been done deliberately, 
 is quite as likely to be sincere as what is done 
 under alarm. In both cases, it is the sincerity 
 of the application to Christ, which constitutes it 
 faith in him. 
 
 But some are ready to say, " Alas ! I am not 
 sure that I was sincere in committing ray soul to 
 Christ for salvation.'* Now, certainly, if you are 
 not sure of your own sincerity, no one else can 
 prove it to you. The utmost that any one can do 
 to help you on this point, is to show you what 
 sincerity is : and really that seems unnecessary. 
 For if you did not intend to be insincere when 
 you applied to the Saviour, and if you do not 
 
28 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 wish to be insincere, nor design to be so, why 
 should you suspect your sincerity ? No one can 
 be a hypocrite, or a pretender, without designing 
 to be so : and therefore, most certainly you are 
 not so, if you dislike to be so. 
 
 Thus far I have confined your attention to the 
 first saving result of the work of the Holy Spirit 
 on the mind, — which is, to render the Saviour 
 " precious" in our esteem. Lest, however, this 
 view of his work should be too general, let us 
 examine the Saviour's own account of the matter. 
 Now, when he gave a detailed account of the 
 work of the Spirit, he said. 
 
 First, " He shall convince the world of sin : 
 of sin, because they beheve not on me." Well, 
 what do you think of unbelief ? what is your 
 opinion of it } — I do not mean, of its abstract 
 nature ; nor do I refer to Infidelity, or its twin 
 " wandering star," Unitarianism ; but to the 
 practical unbelief which we manifested whilst 
 we were careless or heartless in rehgion. Now, 
 what do you think of the time when you lived as 
 if there had been no Saviour, or as if you had 
 been in no want of a Saviour ? That was unbe- 
 lief ! What do you think of the temper which 
 
ON THE HEART. 29 
 
 inclined you to care nothing about an interest in 
 Christ, and kept you from considering your need 
 of it ? That was unbelief ! What do you think 
 of those habits and pursuits which were allowed 
 to banish all serious concern about the salvation 
 of your soul ? What is your present opinion and 
 feeling in regard to all this unbelieving treat- 
 ment of the Saviour ? Should you like to renew 
 it, and to return to your old state of mind ? No ! 
 you are as much shocked at the idea of going 
 back to such feelings and habits, as you are 
 ashamed of having ever felt and acted such a 
 part. Your long and base neglect of the Lamb 
 of God pains and humbles you whenever you 
 think of it ; — it was so unreasonable, unwise, 
 and unkind ! You both wonder and weep that 
 you could have lived as if Emanuel had never 
 died ! This sin sits heavier at times, on your 
 conscience, than any other ; and makes you feel 
 and confess that the Saviour might justly reject 
 you. 
 
 Well, if this be your experience on the subject 
 
 of unbelief, what is all this but conviction of the 
 
 «* sin" of unbelief; and that, too, by the work 
 
 of the Holy Spirit ? For what else could have 
 
 c 2 
 
30 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 brought you to judge and feel thus ? The seeds 
 of these proper sentiments and feelings were not 
 born with you : they must therefore have been 
 sown in your hearts ; and, as the hand of nature 
 never contained them, they must have been sown 
 by the hand of the Spirit. For, as Satan would 
 not have led you into this new state of mind, 
 and as the world could not, and you did not lead 
 yourself into it, it must be from God. Yes, from 
 God, — however unable you may be to trace its 
 connexion with likely means. The means, what- 
 ever they were, were but means ; and have not 
 produced the same effect upon all who were 
 under the same means as yourself. Besides, if 
 this change in your views and feelings be not, at 
 least, the beginning of a Divine change, what 
 would be so ? It is self-evident, that no change 
 would be saving, which did not include shame 
 and sorrow for having neglected the Saviour. 
 Not to be convinced of the sin of unbelief, would 
 falsify any and all other appearances of regene- 
 ration. If, therefore, you have experienced that, 
 without which all other experience would be 
 useless, it is certain that you are not altogether 
 without the Spirit. 
 
ON THE HEART. 31 
 
 Nor is this all. You may not have observed 
 it, but, on examination, you will find that all 
 your most solid and solemn convictions of the 
 evil and demerit of sin in general, have been 
 formed or confirmed by what the Spirit has 
 shown you of the Saviour. For it is with the 
 disease of the soul as with some of the diseases 
 of the body, — it is the remedy which discovers 
 its real nature and extent. A man may feel 
 rather unwell, and yet not be alarmed by his 
 symptoms ; but if a judicious physician prescribe, 
 after examining them, a remedy which is known 
 to be resorted to only in desperate cases, it is the 
 remedy, not the symptoms, as the patient judged 
 of them, that opens his eyes to his danger. He 
 thought himself ill enough to require something ; 
 but when he found that the last resource of medi- 
 cal skill was the only thing which could save his 
 life, then his disorder appeared to him in a new 
 light, and awoke all his fears. Now, so it is with 
 the soul : it is the remedy for the guilt and de- 
 filement of sin, which shows the evil and danger 
 of sin. We may have a general conviction of 
 both, by observing how God abhors sin, and 
 threatens to punish it; and we may see, with 
 
32 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 some clearness and alarm, that we are in some 
 danger from our sins ; and we may feel per- 
 suaded that it is necessary to try something to 
 prevent sin from being our ruin : but it is not 
 until we see that " the blood of ChrisV is the 
 only remedy, that we either understand or feel 
 aright the evil of sin. It is, therefore, chiefly 
 and emphatically by presenting the Lamb slain 
 to the mind, that the Holy Spirit effectually con- 
 vinces of sin. And this is conviction! For, 
 what a sight it gives us of our case and character ! 
 Yes ; of our case, even if our character stand high 
 by comparison. For, as there is only one Saviour, 
 and he the incarnate Son of God ; and only one 
 way of salvation, and it by faith in the blood of 
 that Son ; what must sin be, seeing that none but 
 Emanuel could atone for it, and he only by 
 dying for it ! Whatever, therefore, I may think 
 of my character, my case is this, — as a sinner, 
 there is nothing between me and hell but the 
 blood of Christ. I may not have done so much 
 evil as some ; but as there is no pardon for 
 any sin but through the Cross, I must be lost, in 
 common with the chief of sinners, unless I obtain 
 the remission of my sins through his blood. 
 
ON THE HEART. 33 
 
 This solemn consideration sends through all 
 the soul the solemn conviction, that sin is an 
 evil which we neither understand clearly nor feel 
 deeply, until we really believe the divine testi- 
 mony concerning the person and icork of Christ. 
 Whilst we did not believe on him, that we might 
 be justified by him, our views of the evil and 
 danger of sin were slight and partial ; but now 
 that we feel that we must look to the Lamb slain 
 for all our salvation, or perish for ever, we cannot 
 think lightly of sin. Well, what is this convic- 
 tion of sin, but the work of the Holy Spirit in 
 the mind ? Yes ! the first work which he is ap- 
 pointed to by the constitution of the covenant ! 
 And yet, even this conviction of sin some are 
 discouraged by, and actually interpret it into a 
 token of Divine anger, although it be in itself a 
 token of Divine love, a first-fruit of the Spirit, 
 and a mark of sowing faith too : for no one could 
 think thus of sin, who did not believe Christ to 
 be, and to have done, what God testifies. 
 
 But I will not hurry on this conclusion too 
 fast. It is desirable to meet distinctly the case 
 of those who, by a strange mistake, imagine that 
 their anguish of soul, on account of sin, is in- 
 
34 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 flicted upon them in anger, and arises from God 
 having left them to suffer the consequences of 
 sin. Some have even regarded this anguish as 
 a foretaste of hell on earth. But consider, — was 
 it in anger that God let loose upon the Jews, at 
 Pentecost, all the stings of conscience, until they 
 were *' cut to the heart;" literally *' sawn asun- 
 der ?" Was it intended as a forerunner of " the 
 worm that dieth not," when the arrows of the 
 Almighty drank up their spirits ? No ! they, 
 perhaps, thought so for a time, and during all 
 that part of Peter's sermon which was like the 
 thunder, the earthquake, and the whirlwind at 
 Horeb ; but when " the small still voice" of 
 mercy, through the blood of the Saviour whom 
 they had murdered, broke like the music of 
 heaven on their ears, — then they saw, that God 
 wounded only that he might effectually heal them; 
 and cast them down, that he might lift them up, 
 for ever. Now, why should it not be so in the 
 case of "those who, like them, have been, as it 
 were, "sawn asunder" by self-condemnation? 
 You are not guiltier than the murderers of the 
 Lord of glory, and therefore, although that fact 
 gives you no claim upon mercy, it proves that 
 
ON THE HEART. 35 
 
 your guilt, whatever it is, is not beyond the reach 
 of mercy. Indeed, God could have done nothing 
 better for you, than thus to convict you of sin : 
 for, is it not an answer to your own prayers? 
 You have prayed that he would make you sen- 
 sible of your -need of a Saviour, and empty you 
 of self-dependence : and, therefore, whatever you 
 meant by this, your convictions of sin form the 
 best answer to your supplications. " The whole" 
 know not " their need of a physician ;" and, as 
 God has made you to feel your sickness, the fair 
 interpretation is, that he desires and designs to 
 heal you. Do not, therefore, recklessly or rashly 
 conclude that you are given up, because you are 
 thus given over, for a time, to the terrors of the 
 law, and the stings of the conscience. God is 
 thus, for any thing you know to the contrary, 
 bringing you, "through fire and water, to a 
 wealthy place." 
 
 Having thus seen that the first work of the 
 Spirit is to convince of sin, and that the expe- 
 rience we have just reviewed is conviction of 
 sin ; let us now observe the second part of the 
 work of the Spirit, and examine what you have 
 felt of it, " He shall convince of righteousness^ 
 
36 THE WORK OF THE SPRIT 
 
 because I go to my Father. ^^ At the first sight 
 of these words, you may be ready to say, " I am 
 sure that I have experienced nothing of this ; for 
 1 do not know even what it means.'*'' Perhaps 
 not ; and yet you may be familiar with the senti- 
 ment itself, although this mode of expressing it 
 be mysterious to you. In fact, you must not be 
 startled by words : for, as you have only begun 
 to acquaint yourself with the Scriptures, it is only 
 what might be expected, if you meet with expres- 
 tions which are not, at once, plain to you. They 
 are, however, quite plain to those who have con- 
 sidered them longer; and the meaning of this one 
 is not unknown to you, if you understand any 
 thing of the Gospel. Accordingly, I am not at 
 all afraid of really discouraging or perplexing 
 you, when I affirm, that if you are not convinced 
 of " righteousness," you " have not the Spirit of 
 Christ;'* for, are you not fully convinced that 
 Christ could not have gone back to the Father, 
 if his obedience and death had not wrought out 
 and brought in an *' everlasting righteousness?" 
 You are persuaded and sure that God would not 
 have raised him from the dead, nor exalted him 
 to the throne, if he had failed to satisfy law or 
 
ON THE HEART. 37 
 
 justice. You therefore regard the resurrection 
 and ascension of the Saviour as proofs of the 
 perfection and acceptance of his atonement. Ac- 
 cordingly, were any one to insinuate that he had 
 not magnified the law and satisfied the justice of 
 God, you would appeal with triumph to the fact, 
 that he is now in the midst of the throne as a 
 Lamb that had been slain ; and say, that he could 
 not be there, if he had not " finished" his me- 
 diatorial work here. Well, this is the real and 
 full meaning of the expression, *« of righteous- 
 ness, because I go to my Father." The Saviour's 
 return to the bosom of the Father demonstrates 
 that both his person and work were really what 
 he had declared them to be, divine and atoning. 
 Besides, you are persuaded in your inmost soul 
 that nothing but the righteousness of Christ can 
 justify you before God; and that it can do so ; 
 and accordingly you have adopted the sentiment 
 of Paul, and '* count all things but loss, that you 
 may be found not in your own righteousness, but 
 in the righteousness" of Christ. Well, this was 
 a proof in Paul's case, that he was convinced "of 
 righteousness" by the Spirit : why then should 
 not a similar sentiment prove the same fact in 
 
 E 
 
38 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT, &C. 
 
 your case ? Paul may have understood it better, 
 and felt it more deeply, than you do at present ; 
 but if it has withdrawn all your confidence from 
 your own righteousness, and convinced you that 
 nothing can save you but the righteousness of 
 Christ, this is the substance of Paul's experience 
 on the subject. 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, 
 
 No. III. 
 THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 It is as true, that if any man have the Spirit 
 of Christ, he is Christ's, as that " if any man 
 have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his :" 
 " for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, 
 they are the sons of God :" — " and if children, 
 then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with 
 Christ." It is therefore the duty of all who have 
 been " led by the Spirit," to believe this in their 
 own case, because they are warranted and wel- 
 come to do so, and cannot until they believe it 
 in their own case, experience "the witness," or 
 « the seal" of the Spirit. Indeed " the fruits of 
 the Spirit" will be both few and imperfect until 
 it is believed. 
 
 Accordingly, many who can hardly doubt that 
 they have experienced something of the work of 
 the Spirit on their minds, are afraid to regard it 
 
40 THE WITNESS 
 
 as that " good work" which he will '* carry on;" 
 because they do not feel the witness of the Spirit, 
 nor the joy of the Holy Ghost. Hence the ques- 
 tion which they put to themselves so often — 
 " How can T think that what I have experi- 
 enced is the saving work of the Spirit, seeing 
 that I feel nothing of the witness, the seal, or the 
 earnest of the Spirit ? The fruit of the Spirit is 
 joy and peace, as well as * temperance and good- 
 ness ;' and as I have no joy, and but little peace, 
 is it not likely that all the change which I have 
 undergone is merely the effect of the common 
 operations of the Spirit, instead of being the ef- 
 fect of his special influences ?" Thus many of 
 the truly serious argue in their own case. 
 
 In order to clear up this matter, the first thing 
 to be settled is, evidently, whether the change of 
 views, feelings, and habits, which you have ex- 
 perienced, is a divine change. Now it must be 
 either divine or human. But if you, as a self- 
 condemned and perishing sinner, are looking to 
 Christ alone for a holy salvation ; if you are 
 willing and desirous to be an entire and eter- 
 nal debtor to Him, and to be made like Him 
 in heart and character, this change from your 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 41 
 
 former state of mind cannot be a human change, 
 because no human means could produce it. No- 
 thing human ever brought any soul to feel that 
 there was nothing between it and perishing, but 
 the blood of Christ. All the tendencies of nature 
 are against this conviction. Wherever, therefore, 
 it is the conviction of the mind, it is the special 
 work of the Holy Spirit. Now, if this be the 
 change of mind which you have undergone, it is, 
 unquestionably, a divine change ; and, as unques- 
 tionably, it is your duty to believe it to be so. 
 You may say, " I am afraid to conclude that I 
 have been led by the Spirit:" but if you are 
 come to the word of God for counsel — to the 
 mercy-seat for grace — and to the Cross for all 
 your salvation from sin and hell, — none but the 
 Holy Spirit could have led you there. Those 
 are the grand points to which he leads all whom 
 he quickens. This is the very way in which he 
 glorifies the Saviour. Settle it, therefore, in your 
 mind, from this moment, that your reliance on 
 the Lamb slain for a holy salvation, is absolute 
 proof of having been *' led" by the Holy Spirit. 
 Or, if you still hesitate to admit this in your own 
 case, do ask yourself, and fairly ansvver the ques- 
 e2 
 
42 THE WITNESS 
 
 tion, Would any thing be proof without these 
 sentiments and feelings ? Do you not see that 
 nothing would amount to a saving change, if this 
 holy reliance on the Saviour were not in it ? It 
 is evidently the chief thmg in regeneration. 
 
 Now, if you can neither deny nor doubt that 
 you have been thus led by the Spirit of God, 
 from the love of sin to the love of salvation, it 
 is your immediate duty, as well as privilege, to 
 believe that you are Christ's, and a child of God 
 by Jesus Christ. But here again, you fly off from 
 the scriptural conclusion in your own case, and 
 say, I do not feel myself to be Christ's ; I do not 
 feel myself to be a child of God." But, con- 
 sider ; how can you feel yourself to be so, while 
 you do not believe that you are so ? It is irra- 
 tional to expect that you could feel what you dis- 
 believe. The feeling of sonship must spring from 
 the belief of your own sonship. No man can have 
 the Spirit of adoption, so as to be fully aware of 
 having it, until he believe that he is adopted. Ac- 
 cordingly, it is because believers are sons, that 
 God sends forth the Spirit of his Son into their 
 hearts, ** crying, Abba Father." This seal of 
 the Spirit, like the pentecostal gifts of the Spirit, 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 43 
 
 may not be given at once : it may be delayed 
 much longer than the full inspiration of the 
 Apostles was ; but the Spirit of adoption will 
 be sent forth, and, whenever it is so, it will 
 be by enabling believers to believe that they 
 " are all the children of God by faith in Christ 
 Jesus." 
 
 You may not have observed hitherto, that this 
 is the scriptural way of leading believers into the 
 glorious liberty of the sons of God. Indeed many 
 seem to look for it in another way, and to expect 
 something like a revelation of their own adoption 
 and sonship. They do not see, from the Scrip- 
 tures, that they are the children of God by faith ; 
 and, therefore, they take for granted that their 
 knowledge of their own sonship must come from 
 another quarter — even from the direct witness of 
 the Spirit with their spirits, that they are born of 
 God. Accordingly, for this direct witness, they 
 are praying, and waiting, and hoping. Thus 
 many have been judging and acting for years. 
 They know that until they are the children of 
 God, they are not " heirs of God," nor " joint 
 heirs with Christ;" and, as might be expected, 
 they are often cast down because they obtain no 
 
44 • THE WITNESS 
 
 clear sense of their own sonship. The witness 
 which they look for, and pray for, does not come; 
 and therefore they imagine that it is withheld in 
 sovereignty, or kept back until they shall acquire 
 more of the marks of adoption. And, as they 
 see in themselves many causes why God should 
 not answer their prayers for the witness of the 
 Spirit, they try to be content without it for a time. 
 
 Now it is no mistake, that the Holy Spirit will 
 not witness to the sonship of any child of God, 
 who is living in the indulgence of any known sin: 
 it is no mistake, that the witness of the Spirit is 
 only given in answer to prayer: it is no mistake, 
 that there is a direct witness of the Spirit. ** These 
 are the true sayings of God P' 
 
 But slili there is a mistake ; and it lies in sup- 
 posing that the direct witness of the Spirit is 
 something different from the direct witness of 
 the Word. It is also a mistake to suppose, that 
 the Holy Spirit either will or can witness to our 
 sonship, before our own spirit witness to our 
 having really believed on Christ for salvation. 
 Neither the Spirit of God, nor the Word of God, 
 bears any witness to our adoption, until our own 
 spirit is conscious o^ faith in Christ. 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 45 
 
 It is by leaving the question of personal faith 
 unsettled, that so many both miss and mistake 
 the witness of the Spirit. They allow it to re- 
 main doubtful to themselves, or are afraid to de- 
 cide, whether their own believing in Christ is 
 saving faith or not. They wish it to be so — pray 
 that it may be so — and cherish a faint hope that 
 it may prove to be so in the end ; but, at present, 
 they do not venture to regard their own believing 
 as real faith. Their own spirit does not bear them 
 witness that it is so. Now, while this continues 
 to be the case, they must search their own hearts 
 in vain for the witness, or for the peculiar fruits 
 of the Spirit ; for these are peculiar to believers. 
 Until, therefore, your own spirit witness that you 
 are a believer, the Spirit of God will not, cannot, 
 witness that you are a child of God ; you must 
 not, therefore, shrink from going fully into the 
 question of your own faith. It is, indeed, a solemn 
 one, and not easily settled, owing to the many 
 controversies which exist on the subject of faith ; 
 but still it may be settled, and therefore it should 
 not be left unsettled, especially as you can make 
 no progress towards joy or peace, until you know 
 yourself to be a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
46 THE WITNESS 
 
 Let us, therefore, go into the question calmly and 
 seriously. 
 
 Now, your own spirit, although it does not bear 
 you witness that you are really a believer, wit- 
 nesses somethhig on the subject of salvation by 
 the blood of Christ. It bears you witness that you 
 are no longer indifferent about this way of salva- 
 tion, nor seeking to be saved in any other way. 
 It is even the persuasion of your spirit that there 
 is no other way. You feel also in your inmost 
 soul, that unless you obtain an interest in Christ, 
 you must perish ; and, whatever you may think of 
 his willingness to save you, your whole spirit is fully 
 persuaded that Jesus is able to save you. So far 
 your own spirit witnesses without hesitation or re- 
 serve. Well ; so far you are evidently not an un- 
 believer. All this is not all the truth concerning 
 either the person or the work of Christ ; but it is 
 some of it. It is, at least, the hearty belief of this 
 part of the Gospel — that there is no other name 
 given under heaven, whereby we can be saved, 
 but the name of Jesus. It is also the hearty be- 
 lief, that Jesus is able to save unto the uttermost, 
 all that come unto him. It is also the hearty be- 
 lief, that by the works of the law, no flesh living 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 47 
 
 can be justified. All these things are the living 
 and settled convictions of your mind, as well as 
 the express words of God; and, knowing that 
 you did not always believe these things fully, 
 you are almost persuaded that your strong con- 
 viction of their truth is from the work of the 
 Holy Spirit on your mind. 
 
 You do, then, accede to all this, as being the 
 witness of your own spirit ? Well ; that witness 
 is proof that thus far you are not an unbeliever. 
 Let this, then, be a settled point. And now, carry 
 the inquiry farther into the witness of your own 
 spirit. Does your mind or conscience charge you 
 with disbelieving any part of the divine testimony 
 concerning the person or the work of Christ ? The 
 substance of that testimony is, that Christ is God 
 manifested in the flesh, as a sacrifice for sin. Now, 
 if you disbelieve this, it is a matter of no conse- 
 quence what else you believe. It is not, however, 
 disbelief of it, to be unable to comprehend it fully. 
 It is the great mystery of godliness, and therefore 
 faith has to do with the fact, not with the nature 
 of the union of divinity and humanity, in the per- 
 son of the Saviour. What, then, is the witness 
 of your spirit to this fact ? If you are conscious 
 
48 THE WITNESS 
 
 that you believe it, on the authority of God, to 
 be the fact, thus far also you are evidently not an 
 unbeliever: for what more could you, or indeed 
 any one, do with it, than believe it to be the 
 truth of God ? Perhaps you are ready to say, 
 that you never doubted the divinity or the atone- 
 ment of the Saviour ; and that, as you believe no 
 more now than what you did while you v/ere care- 
 less, you cannot reckon your present believing real 
 faith. Well; what do you reckon it? Unbelief? 
 It certainly is not that, if words have any mean- 
 ing. It may be weak faith, but it cannot be un- 
 belief, if it embrace the truths which you say it 
 does. And as to your having believed, while 
 careless, all that you do now, it is unreasonable 
 and unwise to think so for a moment. It was 
 not believing with the heart, nor for the purpose 
 for which the Son of God became incarnate, and 
 was crucified ; and therefore it was the worst kind 
 of unbelief. Whereas, if you now rest all your 
 hope of salvation upon the atonement, because 
 you believe that the divinity of Christ rendered 
 his death a glorious atonement; this is faith. 
 Words have no meaning, if this be not faith. 
 You might as well call light darkness, as con- 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 49 
 
 sider this unbelief You are not an unbeliever, 
 if your spirit bear you witness that you embrace 
 whatever God has testified concerning the person 
 and work of his Son. 
 
 You are now, if you regard this grand point as 
 settled in your own case, in the direct way to ob- 
 tain the witness of the Spirit to your own adop- 
 tion. And the first thing you want in order to 
 this is, to be enabled to see and believe the con- 
 nexion there is between faith in Christ, and your 
 being a child of God. Now, faith and sonship 
 are inseparably connected in the word of God. 
 Hence the express declaration concerning Christ 
 and believers : " Unto as many as received him, 
 gave he power to become the sons of God ; even 
 to them that believe on his name ;' ' that is, they 
 are empowered, or warranted, to regard them- 
 selves as the children of God. Accordingly, 
 when Paul found the Galatian believers doubt- 
 ing, or misunderstanding this warrant, he said, 
 " Ye are all the children of God, by faith in 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 Now, it is to the truth of this gracious con- 
 nexion between faith and sonship, that the Holy 
 Spirit witnesses ; and the chief part of his witness 
 
 F 
 
50 THE WITNESS 
 
 is, to show us that it is true in our own case. 
 Indeed, the whole of his witness consists in 
 filling, affecting, and influencing our spirit with 
 the sweet persuasion, that it is " the truth of 
 God," that we are warranted to believe our- 
 selves the children of God, because all our faith 
 is in the Son of God. This persuasion may vary, 
 from time to time, in its fulness, clearness, and 
 sweetness; but, even when strongest, its true 
 glory is, that it is true that we are the children 
 of God by faith. The witness of the Spirit is not, 
 therefore, different from what the word of God 
 witnesses on this point ; but the same. He shows 
 nothing to our spirit but just what God has said 
 in the Scriptures, and bears nothing in on the 
 mind but just what is '' written." His witness 
 comes, indeed, with a power and glory at times, 
 which makes the written truth appear newly 
 revealed truth, or something which the believer 
 had never heard, read, or thought of before ! The 
 new force given to the old truth is sometimes 
 such, that even wise^ and good men have almost 
 forgotten, at the moment, the Word of God, and 
 thought only of the direct witness of the Spirit 
 with their spirits. A.nd, in such cases, there was 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 51 
 
 a direct witness : all the melting, cheering, and 
 holy influence of the Word on their minds, was 
 the effect of divine influence ; but still it was 
 divine influence, working by the divine word, or 
 the Spirit showing clearly and powerfully what 
 had been overlooked or misunderstood before. 
 No 7iew truth, but the glory of the old was 
 brought home with demonstration and power ; 
 for even when the witness of the Holy Spirit goes 
 farthest in sweetness and glory, it does not go 
 one hair's breadth beyond, or away from, what 
 is already revealed in the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 And it is self-evident that nothing more can 
 be wanted, either for comfort or establishment. 
 What more could you wish, than to know that 
 you are, what you desire to be — a child of God ? 
 If, therefore, that, be already revealed in the 
 Scriptures, the first thing you really need, in this 
 matter, is an increase of faith to believe the fact. 
 Now, it is expressly revealed, that " As many 
 as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons 
 of God ;" and that as many as *« receive" Christ, 
 or believe on him, are empowered to believe also 
 that they are " become the sons of God." When- 
 ever, therefore, you understand and believe this, 
 
52 THE WITNESS 
 
 in your own case, you will have the witness of 
 the Spirit : for this is the truth of God ; and it is 
 to " the truth," that the Spirit witnesses. " But," 
 you are ready to say, " if the sonship or adoption 
 of believers is revealed already in the Scriptures, 
 what need is there for another witness to it ? If 
 I can learn, from the Word of God, that T am a 
 child of God, is not the witness of the Spirit 
 unnecessary ?" Now, in your case, it is evidently 
 very necessary ; for you have not learned, 
 hitherto, that your " faith hath saved you." You 
 hardly believe this now. You are, perhaps, not 
 yet sure that your believing on Christ is saving 
 faith. There is still a mist around the whole 
 subject, as it regards yourself. It is, indeed, 
 breaking upon you, and brightening up here and 
 there ; but you are almost as much afraid of the 
 light as you are of the darkness. How can you, 
 then, suspect that the testimony of the Word 
 should set aside the witness of the Spirit ? You 
 have often heard and read the written testimony 
 of God, that believers are all his children by 
 faith; but hitherto, you have not ventured to 
 believe this fact in your own case, and can hardly 
 venture to do so now. It is therefore self-evident 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 53 
 
 thai, instead of doing away with, or lessening llie 
 need of the Spirit's witness, the necessity of it 
 is demonstrated by the very difficulty which you 
 feel in trying to believe this part of the Gospel 
 for yourself. Never, perhaps, did you feel more 
 deeply than at this moment, your own need of 
 being led by the Spirit into all truth. 
 
 *» True," you say ; *' but surely the witness of 
 the Spirit is something more spiritual than all 
 this : I have always thought that it consisted in 
 a peculiar divine impression on the mind, or a 
 peculiar manifestation to the soul." Well, is it 
 not a divine impression, and manifestation too, 
 when the mind feels persuaded of the worth and 
 all-sufficiency of the Saviour ; and of the truth of 
 the great scriptural fact, that salvation is by faith 
 alone, that it may be of grace entirely ? The 
 natural impression is, that salvation is by works 
 alone, or by the fruits of faith, rather than by 
 faith itself. If, therefore, you think lightly of 
 feeling persuaded that you must be saved by 
 faith, or perish, you underrate the value of your 
 own convictions : for this conviction, if connected 
 with love to holiness, is the best part and proof 
 F 2 
 
54 THE WITNESS, &C. 
 
 of the work of the Holy Spirit on your mind ; 
 and, in fact, is the beginning of his witness too. 
 
 But still you are not satisfied on this point ; 
 but feel almost sure that the witness of the Spirit 
 must be a more peculiar impression, or manifes- 
 tation, than grace to believe all the truth. Well : 
 an impression of what ? A manifestation of 
 what ? There is nothing to impress or manifest 
 but revealed truth ; and as that is revealed which 
 you want to know, the only thing you require, in 
 order to enjoy the comfort of it, is grace to un- 
 derstand and believe it for yourself. For, do 
 you not see that any impression of what is not 
 revealed could never be relied on, because it 
 could never be proved to be a divine impres- 
 sion ? The manifestation of any thing to the 
 soul, different from, or additional to, the Word 
 of God, could, indeed, come only from a wicked 
 spirit. It is, therefore, evidently wrong to look 
 for any divine witness, but what the Spirit of 
 God bears to the truth of the divine word, and 
 its correspondent influence on our hearts and 
 habits. 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 THE SPECIAL FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 *' The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness.''' 
 It does not, however, follow from this, that all 
 goodness is " the fruit of the Spirit." All real 
 goodness of heart and character is so, of course ; 
 but there is much apparent and comparative 
 goodness, which is merely the fruit of education 
 and self-righteousness. Hence the importance 
 of distinguishing between the fruits of the Spirit 
 and the fruits of nature ; for these, like some of 
 the fruits of the earth, are occasionally similar in 
 appearance, whilst, in reality, they are as dif- 
 ferent as food and poison. Comparatively, there 
 are many who are good neighbours, good pa- 
 rents, and good children : but their goodness, in 
 these social relations, flows from no love to God, 
 nor from any regard to the Holy Spirit. Ac- 
 
56 THE SPECIAL FRUITS 
 
 cordingly, they do not pretend to be influenced 
 by the Spirit or Word of God in the goodness 
 which they cultivate ; it is merely their way — 
 their rule — their family system of acting. This 
 is both the history and mystery of all their com- 
 parative goodness. 
 
 Now, whatever such goodness be, it certainly 
 is not religion ; for God is not made its author 
 nor its end. It is not derived from his grace, 
 nor directed to his glory ; and, therefore, cannot 
 be satisfactory to Him, however beneficial it 
 may be to society. No wonder : we ourselves 
 would not be satisfied with any goodness in our 
 children, if it were unconnected with love to 
 ourselves as their parents. Did they neglect, 
 avoid, and forget us, we should regard them as 
 had children, however good they were to others, 
 and in other respects. And nothing ought to be 
 held real goodness in a child, when filial love 
 and gratitude are wanting. Much more, there- 
 fore, may God, so far as it regards himself, dis- 
 own all moral goodness which begins, and goes 
 on, without either love or gratitude to himself. 
 
 Nor is this all. There is also a kind of love 
 and o;ratitude to God, which does not mend the 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 57 
 
 matter very much. I mean, when they refer to 
 Him chiefly as the God of providence. Many 
 mistake for reUgious principle, the pleasure they 
 feel in their worldly lot. They have succeeded 
 in business beyond their own expectations, and 
 better than many who had more to begin with. 
 Providence has smiled on their industry, and 
 kept watch and ward over their interests. Ac- 
 cordingly, they see, and feel, and confess, that 
 God has been very good to them. On this 
 ground, they feel it to be their duty to cultivate 
 some goodness, and to do some good, in grateful 
 return for the divine goodness to themselves. 
 Now, perhaps, no natural goodness approaches 
 so near to " the fruit of the Spirit," as this. It is 
 amiable, considerate, and highly consistent with 
 a sense of moral obligation. But, after all, it is 
 often no better than self-righteousness, and some- 
 times it is mere ostentation : and even when it is 
 none of these, it may not be the fruit of the 
 Spirit. Accordingly, many who go all this 
 length in goodness, do not even pretend that 
 they are in the least influenced by the Holy 
 Spirit in any good they do. The utmost they 
 say or think is, <* We bless God that we have a 
 
58 THE SPECIAL FRUITS 
 
 heart to do what Httle good we can in the 
 world." Here the matter begins and ends. 
 They have no heart for prayer ; no deep sense 
 of their lost condition as sinners ; no clear under- 
 standing of the way of salvation by the blood of 
 Christ ; no settled persuasion of their own need 
 of a "new heart;" and, therefore, neither their 
 general goodness nor gratitude is *'the fruit of 
 the Spirit." For the first fruits of the Spirit are 
 convictions of sin and righteousness; or, the 
 drawing away of the soul from sin and self- 
 dependence, to take up with the Cross and 
 holiness. Accordingly, where there is no soli- 
 citude to be saved by the blood of the Lamb, 
 there is none of that morality which is the fruit 
 of the Spirit. 
 
 The truth of these distinctions is both illus- 
 trated and confirmed by the order in which the 
 fruits of the Spirit are classed in the Word of 
 God. "Love, joy, peace," are placed first in 
 the catalogue ; and the moral virtues next. Not 
 that " long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, fide- 
 lity, meekness, temperance," are less the fruit of 
 the Spirit than " love, joy, peace ;" nor because 
 they are less necessary ; but because the moral 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 59 
 
 virtues may be imitated without the Spirit, 
 whereas the spiritual graces cannot. Any man 
 may force himself to be temperate ; but no man 
 can force himself to love God or the Lamb. 
 A man may be constitutionally meek and gentle ; 
 but no man loves God, nor rejoices in God, nor 
 has peace with God, naturally. Accordingly, 
 many of the truly serious, who are cultivating 
 all the moral virtues, and who excel in some of 
 them, regard themselves as almost strangers to 
 both the work and witness of the Spirit, because 
 they feel so little love, joy, or peace, in be- 
 lieving. They see, in the case of the primitive 
 believers, that faith wrought by love, and pro- 
 duced joy and peace ; and as their own be- 
 lieving does not work in this way, they dare not 
 regard it as that faith which is from the operation 
 of the Holy Ghost. This, however, is a grand 
 mistake, if all their reliance is on Christ for 
 a holy salvation. That is, *' the faith of God's 
 elect :" and the only reason why it does not lead 
 to " love, joy, peace," is, that^such persons do not 
 understand that their "faith hath saved them :" 
 for if they understood and believed that it had 
 saved them, they could not be long strangers to 
 
60 THE SPECIAL FRUITS 
 
 love, joy, or peace. And even as it is with 
 them, they are not utter strangers, nor so much 
 strangers to these fruits of the Spirit, as they 
 themselves suspect and say. 
 
 I appeal to you who have applied to Christ for 
 a holy salvation, and are relying on Him alone 
 for eternal life : you say, that you feel little or 
 no love to God and the Lamb. Do you mean 
 by that, that you feel more hatred than love to 
 them ? No : you are not conscious of any hatred 
 to them. The bare idea of such a thing shocks 
 you. Well, is there no love in this feeling? You 
 are ready to say — " the absence of all hatred 
 does not imply love; we hate no one, but we 
 do not love all alike." True, you have not the 
 same reason for loving all alike ; and therefore 
 you have no desire to do so : but you really love 
 all whom you desire to love. Now, if you really 
 desire to love God and the Lamb, it is certain 
 that you are not even indifferent to them, far 
 less hostile to them. There is not an utter want 
 of love, where there is a wish to love. Love is, 
 indeed, weak when it consists chiefly in wishes ; 
 but even then it is not pretence nor fancy. And 
 if the weakness of it is the cause of shame and 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 61 
 
 sorrow to you, the love itself, although certainly 
 feeble, it is not insincere. 
 
 Are you then satisfied, in your own mind, 
 that it is really your desire to love God and the 
 Saviour supremely ? Well, love to them must 
 have a bejinningy as well as every other gracious 
 feeling. None of the graces of the Spirit, nor, 
 indeeu, of the gifts of nature, spring to maturity 
 at once. The desire to love God should, there- 
 fore, be welcomed and well treated in the heart : 
 for it is that seed from which all love to Him 
 springs, and without which none ever will or 
 can spring up in the heart. Besides, are you not 
 conscious of loving God and the Saviour, and 
 their "commandments," more than you once 
 did ? And would you not think it a very great 
 change for the worse, were you to relapse to your 
 former state of mind ? Would you not even 
 sniffer a good deal, rather than go back to your 
 old sins and insensibility ? Weigh these ques- 
 tions seriously, and answer them fairly. I would 
 not flatter you, nor teach you to think too highly 
 of "the day of small things;" but as it is evi- 
 dently a day of something gracious in your case, 
 I must guard you against despising it. Now, it 
 
 G 
 
62 THE SPECIAL FRUITS 
 
 never will do any good, but real evil, to go on 
 for ever questioning the sincerity of your love ; 
 for until you admit that it is not insincere, it 
 cannot increase in strength nor in warmth. It is 
 well, it is necessary, to exercise a keen jealousy 
 over our best feelings ; but if they are treated 
 with nothing but jealousy and suspicion, they 
 certainly will not grow better. Faith and love 
 must be " watered," as well as watched ; che- 
 rished, as well as tried : — for if you get into the 
 habit of trying them as hypocrites, or only to 
 find fault with them, you will never be able to 
 come to any satisfactory conclusion, nor to suc- 
 ceed in improving them. 
 
 Besides the kind and degree of love which you 
 want to feel, you never can feel until you believe 
 that God and the Lamb have loved, and do love 
 you. It is your doubt of their love to you that 
 keeps down your love to them. This is the real 
 secret of all the coldness and weakness you com- 
 plain of; unless, indeed, some sin has still the 
 throne of your heart. Then, indeed, the Holy 
 Ghost will not shed abroad the love of God in 
 your heart. But if this be not the case, what 
 you want, in order to love God more, is to be 
 
OP THE SPIRIT. 63 
 
 enabled to believe that God has loved you. 
 Now, why not believe this ? You are warranted 
 and welcome to believe this for yourself, if all 
 your faith is in Christ for a holy salvation. 
 And, whatever you may think, you never can 
 know that God has loved you, or that Christ 
 " gave himself" for you, but by believing it. 
 You may have imagined, hitherto, that the sense 
 or assurance of this, must be borne in upon the 
 mind in some mysterious or supernatural man- 
 ner; but if, by that, you mean in some way 
 apart from believing what God has said, you 
 mistake greatly. You must just take God's 
 word for it, if ever you would be sure that he 
 has loved you. Well, you have his word for it : 
 — "TAe Father himself loveth you^'' saith 
 Christ, ^^ because ye have loved me ;^' and you 
 have loved Him, if you have committed your 
 souls to him for salvation, and are willing to 
 obey him. 
 
 Now, do you not see, at a glance, that the 
 moment the soul admits the sweet persuasion of 
 God's love to itself, it is impossible not to love 
 him > Try it in your own case, if it be merely 
 as an experiment. Suppose that a voice, direct 
 
64 THE SPECIAL FRUITS 
 
 from heaven, assured you that God had " loved 
 you with an everlasting love," and that, there- 
 fore, " with loving-kindness he had drawn you" 
 to the Cross and the mercy-seat; — could you 
 hear this assurance without a glowing heart ? 
 Would not all your affections warm, and melt, 
 and flow out to God ? You feel at once that 
 such knovi^ledge of his love to you, would secure 
 and inflame your love to Him for ever ! Well ; 
 if you are sure that you are a believer, you have 
 this assurance in your Bible : and, therefore, it is 
 just as true, as if a voice, direct from the heaven 
 of heavens, were to inform you. Why not be- 
 lieve it, then ? This was the apostolic way of 
 growing in love. *' We love Him, because he 
 first loved us." How did they know that God 
 had loved them ? They knew that they had 
 ** believed through grace," and that God loved 
 all such ; and, therefore, they said, " we have 
 known and believed the love wherewith God 
 hath loved us." 
 
 Now, as to the second special fruit of the 
 Spirit — "Joy;" however you may have com- 
 plained, hitherto, that you had no joy in be- 
 lieving ; and however you may have wondered 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 65 
 
 that your application to the Saviour was not 
 followed by «* the joy of salvation;" the cause is 
 obvious. It is not because the Spirit has been 
 sovereignly withheld from you ; nor that joy 
 does not follow believing now, " as in the days 
 of old;" but, evidently and certainly, because 
 you have, hitherto, believed only one-half of the 
 Gospel. But whilst the belief of that half is 
 enough for safety, the belief of the other also is 
 requisite in order to "joy." 
 
 Consider this. The first and chief part of the 
 Gospel is God's testimony concerning the person 
 and work of his Son. With the belief of this 
 testimony, he has graciously and inseparably 
 connected the promise of eternal life. Hence 
 arises a second divine testimony ; and it is con- 
 cerning all who have believed the first with the 
 heart. Now, that second testimony, which is 
 thus concerning them, is, that they "/iaye eter- 
 nal life ;" that they " are the children of God ;" 
 that they " are justified ;" in a word, that they 
 have obtained the mercy and favour they were 
 seeking ! Now, the moment they bislieve that 
 they are actual heirs of the salvation they were 
 believing in Christ for, joy must come into 
 G 2 
 
66 THE SPECIAL FRUITS 
 
 their hearts ; indeed it cannot be kept out ; for 
 it is impossible that any man can be joyless, who 
 believes that all his sins are pardoned, and his 
 soul redeemed, by the blood of Christ. This, 
 then, is that half of the Gospel which you have 
 either not observed before, or not ventured to be- 
 lieve in your own case. The consequence has 
 been, that all the joy you have had from looking 
 to the Saviour, has been damped and kept down 
 by the chilling suspicion, that he might not save 
 you. Sometimes you have got above this fear 
 for a moment, and seen so much of his grace 
 and glory, that you could not doubt his willing- 
 ness to save even you. You have, then, clasped 
 the dear hope to your heart, and resolved that 
 you would cling to it through life. But how 
 often have you lost your hold of it ! It has 
 gone, you know not how. Why ? If the neg- 
 lect of known duty, or the indulgence of known 
 sin, has not been the cause of its withdrawment, 
 the cause is obvious : — you did not see that this 
 fond hope of salvation was fully warranted, and 
 chartered to you, by the express word of God. 
 You took up the hope at first, not so much 
 because you felt warranted and welcome^ by 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 67 
 
 that, to do so, but because you were willing to 
 do so, and could not be happy without it. Ac- 
 cordingly, whenever you asked yourself the ques- 
 tion, '* what right have I to hope for so great a 
 salvation ?" — you could not answer it to your 
 own satisfaction. You looked at yourself — and 
 felt that you had no claim ! You looked at 
 others — and felt afraid to hope. But you did 
 not look to the things which are " written" unto 
 them ** that believe on the name of the Son of 
 God," that they "might know" that they 
 ** have eternal life." Had you looked at them, 
 your joy might have been " full." Let it be so 
 now: for '*it is written," that whosoever be- 
 lieveth shall never perish, but have everlasting 
 life ; and you do believe, if you love the Gospel. 
 All this, I am aware, is easily said. I feel, 
 with you, that it is easier to advise than to act 
 here. Paul evidently felt this, when he said to 
 believers, "Rejoice in the Lord; and again I say, 
 rejoice." This repetition of the injunction im- 
 plies that, like ourselves, they did not understand 
 at first, or they forgot at times, the warrant 
 which faith has, in the divine Word, to "rejoice 
 always." It was, however, a mistake, when be- 
 
68 THE SPECIAL FRUITS 
 
 lievers were afraid to rejoice in the Lord : for ex- 
 cept when they become remiss or irregular, they 
 are always warranted to cherish the joy of salva- 
 tion, as the strength of their heart. 
 
 In hke manner "Peace," whilst it is the fruit 
 of the Spirit, is also the effect of faith. It is not 
 a feeling of tranquillity infused into the mind or 
 the conscience, apart from "the truth;" but by 
 the truth. The Word of God is "the seed" of 
 that peace which is the fruit of the Spirit. By 
 overlooking this fact, and by mistaking the real 
 nature of spiritual peace, many perplex and 
 sadly hinder themselves in the divine life. In- 
 deed, they often look for a kind of peace which 
 is not promised, and expect it in a way which is 
 not revealed. What do you mean when you 
 pray for peace } What would you consider as 
 an answer to this prayer ? If you mean by 
 peace, that sweet serenity of soul which you 
 have felt when you have obtained great enlarge- 
 ment of heart in secret devotion, or when you 
 have been, as it were, carried " out of the body" 
 by some glorious sermon, full of the glory of the 
 Saviour ; you mistake the matter. This is, in- 
 deed, peace; even "the peace of God, which 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 69 
 
 passeth understanding;'* but it is that degree of 
 it, which is more the reward of extraordinary de- 
 votional habits, than the effect of ordinary faith. 
 Tastes of such holy tranquillity are vouchsafed, at 
 times, to some, when they begin to follow the 
 Lamb, that they may be encouraged to follow 
 him fully, and convinced that his ways are 
 peace ; but still, it is his own peace which he 
 has left to his followers, as their ordinary por- 
 tion. ** Peace I leave unto you : My peace give 
 I unto you." 
 
 This was a distinction peculiarly wanted by 
 the first disciples. They were naturally san- 
 guine in their expectations, and prone to picture 
 to themselves bright days and great things. Had, 
 therefore, the Saviour said nothing but " Peace I 
 leave unto you," — the probability is, that they 
 would have flattered themselves with a sunny 
 prospect of ease and tranquillity. How great, 
 then, must have been their disappointment when 
 they had to endure ** fears without, and fightings 
 within !" In that case, they might have said, 
 " We looked for peace, and, behold, war." All 
 this was, however, prevented by the qualifying 
 clause, '* My peace give I unto you." This de- 
 
70 THE SPECIAL FRUITS 
 
 fined the legacy, without lessening its real value : 
 for the Saviour's own peace, although it did not 
 exempt him from trials, nor from the temptations 
 of Satan, nor even from the occasional hidings of 
 the Divine presence from his soul ; yet it secured 
 both his safety and triumph under them all. Ac- 
 cordingly, that kind and degree of peace his 
 Apostles found during their work and warfare. 
 
 Now this distinction we have need to notice 
 and remember ; for we too are prone to expect 
 what is not promised. It would quite suit our 
 taste and wishes to have no cares, trials, or 
 temptations. We should be delighted if we were 
 never to have an uneasy nor an unholy thought 
 in our minds again. To have our hearts, like 
 Gabriel's harp, always in tune, would be, indeed, 
 heaven on earth, and the very thing we desire ! 
 But all this is the poetry, not the sober reality, 
 of religion. It is not to be angels, but to be 
 "saints" on the earth, that we are called by 
 God. ''A life of faith on the Son of God," is a 
 life of warfare against the lusts of the flesh and 
 of the mind ; a life of watching against unbelief 
 and temptation ; a life of obedience and sub- 
 mission to the will of God : and the peace which 
 
OF THE SPIRIT. 71 
 
 is the fruit of the Spirit, is the persuasion that 
 God is upon our side, and will not suffer us to be 
 overcome. This was the Saviour's own peace, 
 when his heart was broken with reproach and 
 his body agonized with pain, and his soul torn 
 with anguish : and we deceive ourselves, if wc 
 mean by peace, exemption from trouble of mind 
 or body. Such peace is not promised. The 
 substance of what is promised is, " My grace is 
 sufficient for thee,'''' 
 
 Now many who, in their own vague or vision- 
 ary sense of the word, say that they have no 
 -peace in believing, are certainly not strangers to 
 this kind and degree of peace : for they evidently 
 bear their trials well, and resist temptation man- 
 fully, because they believe that God has some 
 gracious design in all that he calls them to do 
 or suffer. 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 No. V. 
 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 Until this subject is understood, it is impos- 
 sible for any one, however serious or devotional, 
 to enjoy the vritness, or to abound in the fruit, of 
 the Holy Spirit. Now, it is either not clearly 
 understood, or not fully believed, in every case of 
 fear which is not relieved by it. The fear of 
 perishing is utterly incompatible with an intel- 
 ligent behef of the scriptural fact, that " he who 
 believeth" on Christ ^^ is justified ;^' unless, in- 
 deed, the person who is in fear, is also conscious 
 that he has not faith in the Saviour. In that 
 case, the doctrine of justification by faith can- 
 not, of course, remove his fears ; but must, if he 
 understand it, increase, instead of lessen them. 
 Those, however, who are persuaded that they 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 73 
 
 have faith in the Saviour, and some love to him, 
 but who are still afraid that they are not justi- 
 fied by his righteousness, are certainly labouring 
 under some mistake ; for his righteousness is 
 " upon all them that believe," It is, therefore, 
 "upon" themselves, as a robe of salvation, if 
 they are believers ; and they are believers who 
 rely upon and love Jesus Christ for his holy sal- 
 vation. Those v/ho do so, because they are per- 
 suaded of the truth of his divinity and atonement, 
 cannot be unbelievers, whatever they may sus- 
 pect or think. This state of mind is utterly 
 unlike unbelief. It is the very reverse of it in 
 fact. It is faith, if it be any thing; for faith is 
 the cordial belief of *' the truth" concerning the 
 person and work of Christ. Indeed, if it were 
 not, then it would follow that faith is the belief 
 of conjectures; for unless conjectures, there is 
 nothing but *« the truth" to beheve; and surely 
 guesses, however plausible, should never be pre- 
 ferred to the word of God, nor even connected 
 with it. Besides, there is no need for any, see- 
 ing God has graciously and inseparably con- 
 nected with the belief of «' the truth as it is in 
 Jesus," the promise of justification and eternal 
 
 H 
 
74 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 life. All things necessary for life and godliness 
 are promised to all who embrace the divine tes- 
 timony with an honest heart. Whoever, there- 
 fore, does so, has no need to perplex himself 
 with conjectures about his own adoption, re- 
 demption, or election. He has been elected, 
 redeemed, and adopted, if he has ** believed 
 through grace," and for holy purposes, "the 
 glorious Gospel of the blessed God." All who 
 ** hold the truth" (except, indeed, those who 
 *' hold it in unrighteousness") have no occasion 
 at all to doubt whether the Saviour died for 
 them. He both loved them, and gave himself 
 for them, who receive the truth in the love of it. 
 These are <* true sayings" of the true God ; and, 
 therefore, the only thing wanted in order to enjoy 
 the comfort of them, is to be enabled to believe 
 them for ourselves. This, indeed, the Holy 
 Spirit will not enable us to do, if we are either 
 indulging sin, or neglecting duty, or seeking a 
 sanction for inconsistencies ; but where this is 
 not the case, the Spirit will not refuse nor delay 
 to increase our faith, if we try to grow in know- 
 ledge, that we may grow in grace. For reluc-- 
 tance to " lead into all truth" is no part of his 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 75 
 
 character. He is a " free Spirit," and therefore, 
 although he teach gradually, he will teach cer- 
 tainly, and *'to profit." 
 
 When there is, however, perplexity on the 
 subject of Justification by Faith, the best thing 
 that can be done is, to examine the subject as if 
 we had never heard of it before. And we ought 
 to feel no reluctance to do so. Let us examine 
 it now, 
 
 ** How can man be justified with GodP^* — This 
 solemn question was put by Bildad to Job ; and 
 although Job's answer was not explicit at the 
 moment, his opinion on the subject may be in- 
 ferred from the fact, that he had said before, " If 
 I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn 
 me." Paul, however, has given a direct and 
 full answer to this momentous question, by 
 stating explicitly how he himself, and his fellow 
 converts, sought to be justified. — *' We have be- 
 lieved in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified 
 by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of 
 the law,'' (Gal. ii. 16.) In this way, whatever 
 it moan, Paul and his associates sought for jus- 
 tification before God. And whatever justifica- 
 tion is, they found it by this means. Accord- 
 
76 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 ingly he said, "Being now justified by his blood, 
 we shall be saved from wrath through him." 
 And again, " being justified by faith, we have 
 peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ/' 
 Thus clearly does the Apostle declare both the 
 means which he employed, and his success in 
 using them. He took God's way, and God gave 
 him his own wish. Although the chief of sin- 
 ners, God justified Paul, when he believed on 
 Christ for righteousness. Not, indeed, that God 
 justified Paul's conduct or principles as a sinner. 
 No ! for if <' he that justifieth the wicked is an 
 abomination to the Lord," it is self-evident that, 
 in the sense of thinking or declaring Paul inno- 
 cent, the Lord himself did not, and could not, 
 justify him. God forgiveth '< iniquity, trans- 
 gression, and sin ;" but, in doing so, he *' will 
 by no means clear the guilty" from the charge of 
 having been guilty. He treats sinners as kindly 
 as if they were innocent, or as if they had never 
 been sinners, when they return from sin to the 
 Saviour ; but he neither considers them innocent, 
 nor paUiates their guilt. He forgives, and even 
 forgets, all the sins of all who believe ; but he 
 allows no believer to forget that he was a sinner, 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 11 
 
 nor to suppose that his sins were not hateful and 
 hated by Him. It is, therefore, because believ- 
 ing sinners are accepted for the sake of Christ, 
 as if they were not sinners, that they are said to 
 be justified by God. 
 
 The scriptural doctrine of Justification by 
 Faith, is, — that the Saviour was treated as if he 
 had been guiltyy in order that the guilty, who 
 believe in Him, might be accepted as if they 
 were innocent. This is what Paul means when 
 he says of Christ, " He was made sin for us, that 
 we might be made the riorhteousness of God in 
 him." The Saviour had no sin, he *'knew no 
 sin," yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. 
 Why ? Emmanuel had voluntarily, cheerfully, 
 and fully, put himself in the room of sinners ; 
 and therefore he was treated as if tiieir sins had 
 been his own, so far as the punishment of them 
 went. He had to bear the curse as fully as if he 
 had personally incurred it. And just because he 
 did so, the blessing is as freely given to them who 
 believe, as if they personally deserved it ; for 
 what the Saviour deserves for his obedience and 
 death, that the sinner obtains by relying on him 
 
 for a holy salvation. 
 
 H 2 
 
78 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 This is the justification revealed and pro- 
 mised in the Gospel. This is the justification 
 which Paul sought and found by believing ; he 
 was welcomed, accepted, and blessed, by God at 
 the cross, as if he had never sinned ; because on 
 that cross the Lamb of God made his soul an 
 offering for sin. And what more could a sinner 
 wish, than to be received with as much tender- 
 ness as if he were innocent ? Innocence secures 
 the fulness of the Divine love and favour. The 
 angels are innocent, and therefore are the sons 
 of God, radiant with his glory, and replenished 
 with his own blessedness for ever. And yet — 
 Gabriel when he tunes his harp, and prostrates 
 his crown before the eternal throne ; and sera- 
 phim, when they cover their faces with their 
 wings, in adoration of God and the Lamb, are 
 not more welcome than a sinner returning to 
 God by the blood of the Lamb is ! He, indeed, 
 is not innocent ; but, for the sake of that blood 
 on which he relies, he is received as graciously 
 and loved as freely, as admiring cherubim or 
 adoring seraphim are. Accordingly Paul, when 
 speaking of " the principahties and powers in 
 heavenly places," as studying the manifold wis- 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 79 
 
 dom of God, adds, " In Christ, we [we in com- 
 mon with them) have boldness and access with 
 confiden.ce, by the faith of Him." 
 
 It is no valid objection against this simple 
 view of justification, that God visits the trans- 
 gressions of believers "with the rod," and their 
 iniquity " with stripes." In this respect, in- 
 deed, they are not treated as innocent ; but, what 
 is far better for them, *« God dealeth" with them 
 "as with sons." "For what son is he whom 
 the Father chasteneth not ? Whom the Lord 
 loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son 
 whom he receiveth." Only the really innocent 
 can be exempted from all suffering. Believers 
 are, however, treated as righteous, so far as it is 
 good for them to be so. 
 
 They are adopted into the family of God, and 
 made heirs of eternal life, as freely and fully as 
 if they were personally righteous or wholly inno- 
 cent : and if they are made to feel their sinful- 
 ness by their pardon, and are only acquitted as 
 those who are justly condemned ; this method of 
 showing mercy does not lessen the value of the 
 boon, but, indeed, enhances it, and sustains the 
 honour of the law and the Gospel at the same 
 
80 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 time. For it would not be good for us to be 
 pardoned so, that our guilt should seem palli- 
 ated ; nor to escape from the curse so, that we 
 should not feel that we had been under it. Such 
 a way of saving sinners would be as injurious to 
 their own spiritual interests, as it would be dis- 
 honourable to God. Accordingly, it is not God's 
 way in justifying the ungodly who believe in 
 Jesus : he welcomes them as if they were godly, 
 but makes them to feel and confess that they are 
 ungodly. Thus, even the aboundings of divine 
 grace towards sinners are " in all wisdom and 
 prwdence ;" for whilst they remove the sting and 
 stain of guilt from the conscience, they increase, 
 rather than lessen, the sense of the evil of sin, 
 in every conscience which is purged by the blood 
 of Christ from "dead works," — i, e. from works 
 which deserve death. 
 
 Here, then, is the justification which all sin- 
 ners need, and which awaits every sinner who, 
 like Paul, will believe in Christ, that he may be 
 justified by the faith of Christ : God will accept 
 him as righteous, for the sake of the righteous- 
 ness of Christ, and treat him for ever as one 
 reconciled by the blood of the cross. Like the 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 81 
 
 Father of the returned prodigal, God will rejoice 
 over him, and receive him into complete son- 
 ship. Having thus seen what justification really 
 is, you now see, 
 
 First, How the Gospel suits your case as a 
 sinner. It assures you that, by believing on 
 Christ, God will welcome and accept you as fully 
 as if you had never sinned. Now this is exactly 
 what you want and wish. You do not wish to be 
 treated as He treats the innocent angels, except 
 so far as that is necessary to the safety of your 
 soul. Accordingly, you do not object to those 
 fatherly chastisements which the children of God 
 have to endure. What you desire is, to be a 
 child of God. Well ; there is ample provision 
 in the Gospel for making you what you thus 
 wish to be; for in comJng to God by Christ 
 he will treat you, for Christ's sake, as if you 
 were righteous. Now it is because you are not 
 righteous, but sinful and unholy, that you are 
 afraid. All your fear arises from your aggravated 
 guilt and utter unworthiness. You cannot forget 
 what you have been, nor overlook what you are, 
 as a sinner before God. W^ell ; you ought not to 
 forget nor overlook it. It is, however, a mercy 
 
82 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 to feel sensible of it, and humbled for it ! But 
 now tell me, how would you feel if you were as 
 innocent as a holy angel ? Suppose that you 
 had never sinned in thought, word, or deed, 
 would you be afraid then ? Would you, in that 
 case, doubt whether God would admit you into 
 his favour and kingdom ? No ; " the righteous 
 Lord loveth righteousness," and therefore you 
 would feel confident, if you were perfectly righ- 
 teous, that you would meet with no refusal from 
 God. You could calculate to a certainty then, 
 upon eternal happiness ! So you might ; for 
 God can as soon cease to live, as refuse to love 
 the innocent. "But what is all this to the 
 point," you say, *« seeing I am not only not 
 innocent, but very guilty and depraved too?" 
 True ; but if there is a righteousness so meri- 
 torious, that, for the sake of it, God can and will 
 treat you as if you were not guilty, this would 
 answer the same purpose as perfect innocence 
 on your own part. Do you not see that ? You 
 are, indeed, utterly unworthy ; but the Saviour is 
 infinitely worthy : if, therefore, you can have all 
 the benefit of Ais worthiness placed to your own 
 account, you will be as safe as if you had never 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 83 
 
 sinned. Now this is just what God does for sin- 
 ners, when they apply to Christ for all their 
 salvation : he places to their account the right- 
 eousness of Christ, so that he welcomes them as 
 if it were all their own. 
 
 Now this is the provision made for the jus- 
 tification of the ungodly who will believe in 
 Christ ; and, most certainly, it fully meets your 
 case as a sinner, however guilty you may be ; for 
 your unworthiness cannot exceed the worthiness 
 of the Lamb slain. "True," you say, "the 
 •' righteousness of Christ is enough to justify 
 me, or any sinner ; but the question is, will God 
 impute that righteousness to me? will he give 
 me the benefit of it ?" This question implies a 
 doubt, if not a fear, that he may refuse to do so 
 in your case. I therefore ask at once, — WTiy do 
 you fear that God will refuse to justify you for 
 the sake of Christ ? Has he anywhere said that 
 he will not ? Is it his custom to refuse those who 
 are willing to submit to the righteousness of 
 Christ ? Has he ever sent away any one soul 
 unclothed with that robe, who sought it in good 
 earnest ? No ! All history, all heaven, says 
 No! And were all hell compelled to answer 
 
84 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 these questions, it would say No. Why, then, 
 are you afraid of Zi refusal ? There is nothing 
 in the whole, or in any part, of the character of 
 God, which renders it necessary that he should 
 reject you ; for, by the righteousness of Christ, 
 he can be perfectly just in justifying any one 
 who believes : and, as his justice is thus on your 
 side, it is self-evident that none of his other 
 perfections can be against you. In hke manner, 
 there is nothing in the character of the Saviour 
 which renders your rejection necessary or likely. 
 The robe of his righteousness is wide enough to 
 embrace, and large enough to cover, your soul ; 
 and he is not less willing now to enfold sinners 
 in it, than when he threw it around the chief of 
 sinners. For as his righteousness is " upon" all 
 them who do believe, so it is free unto all who 
 7viU believe, on him for justification. Now, 
 really, if these facts do not fully meet your case 
 as a sinner, it must be a very peculiar case, and 
 its peculiarity must be imaginary , not actual; 
 unless, indeed, you are still uncertain whether 
 you are a believer or not. 
 
 But now, even if you have not yet, like Paul, 
 believed in Christ, " that" you «' might be justi- 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. bO 
 
 fied ;" still, something is gained by this inquiry, 
 if you now understand what justification is, and 
 see the possibility of your own justification. Are 
 you then convinced that God could be just even 
 in justifying you by faith ? Is the way of accept- 
 ance through the merits of Christ plain to you, 
 in all things but upon the point of believing ? 
 Could you now venture to hope freely, if you 
 were sure that your believing is faith ? Well ; 
 we are, then, in a fair way to bring this matter 
 to a favourable issue. And it will facilitate this, 
 to mark distinctly what Paul believed in Christ 
 for. 
 
 Now he says, that he believed that he might 
 be justified. His own justification was, there- 
 fore, his first object when he applied to Christ. 
 And it ought to have been the first blessing 
 which he sought by faith ; for, until a con- 
 demned sinner is acquitted from the curse of the 
 law, no other blessing, nor all the other bless- 
 ings of grace, could save him. The sentence 
 of condemnation must be repealed, or he must 
 perish, whatever else were done for him. This 
 solemn fact is, however, not sufficiently attended 
 to even by the serious : and hence it is, that many 
 I 
 
86 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 of them begin their believing in Christ — not in 
 order that they may be justified at once, or first, 
 but that they may be made better, and be ** born 
 again." I do not, of course, find fault with this 
 object in believing. Far from it. The man 
 who does not apply to Christ to be made a " new 
 creature," does not apply to him for the grand 
 purpose for which Christ died and rose again. 
 But still, salvation from sin, although the chief 
 practical object of the Atonement, is not its on/y 
 object. Christ died to redeem us from the curse 
 of the law ; and as nothing can place the soul 
 in safety while it is under that curse, those who 
 know this should begin their believing on Christ, 
 for the express purpose of being justified, or 
 freed from the curse. This plan of proceeding 
 would not displace their moral designs, nor 
 lessen their solicitude about holiness ; and it 
 would bring their faith in Christ to the test, far 
 more effectually than the other plan does. The 
 man who is trying to rely on the Saviour, merely 
 that he may be enabled to become a better man, 
 finds this kind of believing so easy, that it is no 
 wonder if he doubt whether his believing is that 
 faith which is produced by the operation of the 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 87 
 
 Spirit ; — whereas, were he to go to the mercy- 
 seat for the distinct purpose of believing in 
 Christ, in order that the curse of the eternal 
 law might be taken off from his soul ; this so- 
 lemn errand would show him how much faith he 
 needed, and how necessary it is to pray, " Lord, 
 help my unbelief, and increase my faith." 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 No. vr. 
 
 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD AND THE LAMB. 
 
 In nothing, perhaps, is the work of the Holy 
 Spirit upon the heart more sensible or self- 
 evident, than in the new views and feelings 
 which it produces in regard to prayer. Even 
 where prayer is not altogether neglected, nor 
 hurried over heedlessly, there is a wonderful 
 change of sentiment takes place, whenever the 
 Gospel takes effect upon the mind. We see and 
 feel then, that, except for temporal mercies, we 
 never prayed in thorough good earnest, nor had 
 any real love or relish for devotion. It was often 
 performed as a task, and always as a mere duty. 
 We attended to it rather to prevent temporal evil, 
 than to obtain spiritual good ; and more from a 
 dread of the consequences of being prayerless, 
 
FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD. 89 
 
 than from any pleasure we had in praying. In- 
 deed, as to pleasure in devotion, it seemed to us 
 a contradiction in terms, or an impossible thing. 
 Accordingly, if we knew any one who was in the 
 habit of spending much time in his closet, we 
 were ready, if not to rank him with the Phari- 
 sees, who loved " long prayers," to wonder what 
 he found to say during the time. And when we 
 heard ministers appeal to such men, affirming 
 that they sometimes left their closets with more 
 reluctance than they ever felt on entering them, 
 and that they could almost have chosen to die on 
 their knees, or to have spent an eternity in that 
 happy frame of mind, we either knew not what 
 to think, or thought that they had a very strange 
 taste indeed. In a word, there was nothing 
 seemed so unlikely to us, as that we should ever 
 take pleasure in praying. But lo ! when we 
 awoke to the worth of our immortal souls, and 
 were made alive to the infinite value of an 
 everlasting salvation, we were glad of any oppor- 
 tunity of pouring out our hearts unto God. Our 
 difficulty then was, not how to find time or heart 
 for prayer, but how to obtain answers to prayer : 
 and we were never so happy as when hope and 
 i2 
 
90 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 
 
 peace were stealing upon our minds, whilst thus 
 wrestling with God for mercy. Then we began 
 to understand what we had heard about the 
 pleasures of devotion, and no longer wondered 
 that communion with God should be magnetic 
 to the soul. And it is no wonder! For what can 
 be so dehghtful as that holy calm of the mind 
 which enables us to unbosom unto God, as unto 
 a father, all our feelings and desires ; to dwell 
 on all his perfections, not only without dism^iy or 
 dishke, but with complacency and confidence ; to 
 repeat and plead all his great and precious pro- 
 mises with faith and hope ; and to anticipate his 
 guidance until death, and his presence through 
 eternity ? This is a joy which the world cannot 
 give. Even when it does not rise so high as all 
 this, it is more satisfying than any human plea- 
 sure ; for the heart is relieved and soothed, if it 
 can only pour out its fears and anxieties into 
 the bosom of God. The bare consciousness 
 of having felt as in his presence, wept as in his 
 presence, and spoken as in his presence, leaves a 
 Sweet solemnity upon the spirits, which is heal- 
 ing, if not exhilarating. And when the soul can 
 realize God as noticing, listening, and pitying, 
 
AND THE LAMB. 91 
 
 and feels itself getting nearer and nearer to his 
 presence and heart, and finds itself melted and 
 impressed, as if he were visibly present or au- 
 dibly speaking, then its joy is *' unspeakable,'* 
 even if it is not ** full of glory." 
 These hints will remind you of the 
 
 "Moments rich in blessing," 
 
 which you have spent upon your knees before 
 the Cross and the mercy-seat. You can, indeed, 
 never forget those closet interviews with God 
 and the Lamb ; for they were the chief means of 
 determining your choice, of fixing your princi- 
 ples, and of forming your character. You may, 
 indeed, have lost so much of your first de- 
 votional spirit, that you no longer obtain such 
 happy interviews with God in your closet ; and if 
 so, you cannot remember the past without pain. 
 You cannot, however, forget the days of old, nor 
 the morning of your first love. They are impe- 
 rishable recollections in every renewed soul ; for 
 when communion with God sets as a day-star in 
 the heart, the memory of it rises as a dog-star in 
 the conscience. Your shadow is not more in- 
 separable from you than the consciousness of 
 
92 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 
 
 your loss and declension ; and hence your secret, 
 if not your public, language is, " O that it were 
 with me as in months past, when the candle of 
 the Lord shone in my tabernacle !" 
 
 Now, when those who have enjoyed com- 
 munion with God lose it thus, there can be no 
 doubt that there has been, on their own part, 
 some sin, imprudence, or remissness, which oc- 
 casioned the loss ; for God is not the first to hide 
 his face, nor does he ever withhold his presence 
 arbitrarily. He may not always manifest himself 
 to the soul so sensibly and sweetly as at first ; 
 but he does not withdraw his presence entirely, 
 except when he is provoked : but as it is the 
 exhalations from the earth, and not from the 
 heavens, which form the clouds and mist that 
 hide the natural sun, so it is something from 
 ourselves, not from God, which conceals the Sun 
 of Righteousness from those who, having once 
 walked in his light, now walk in darkness. 
 Such being the fact of the case, it is self-evi- 
 dent that the darkness cannot be removed, but 
 by the removal of that which brought it on, 
 whatever it was. Whether sin or sloth, negli- 
 gence or irregularity, wrong tempers or bad 
 
AND THE LAMB. 93 
 
 habits, they must be abandoned, if we would 
 have the light of the Divine countenance, or the 
 joy of salvation, restored. For " if we say that 
 we have fellowship with Him, and walk in dark- 
 ness, we lie, and do not the truth.'''' We never 
 can combine a worldly spirit with a devotional 
 spirit, nor keep up a good hope in a bad con- 
 science. In like manner, if less time than usual 
 is allowed for secret prayer, or less pains taken 
 to enter into and keep up the spirit of it, com- 
 munion with God is not to be obtained, and need 
 not be expected. God does not, indeed, exact a 
 long time for prayer; but, until we seek him 
 with our " whole heart," he will not cheer our 
 hearts with the sense of his presence. He will 
 be " inquired of," before he will shine forth 
 from between the cherubim. Now, hasty and 
 heartless prayer does not amount to inquiring ; 
 and it hinders the manifestations of the Divine 
 presence. Indeed haste, like the unbelief of the 
 Jews, which prevented Christ from doing many 
 mighty works amongst them, prevents God from 
 communing with the soul from the mercy-seat. 
 There is not time for it, when we are in haste 
 to get away from our closets. We ourselves are 
 
94 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 
 
 not prepared to enjoy or improve it, when we 
 are up from our knees in a few minutes. We 
 could not commune with a friend in that space 
 of time, nor in that state of mind : so that 
 when prayer comes to this low ebb, it is no 
 wonder \i Bethel is turned into Luz again, and 
 the soul sent empty away from the throne of 
 grace. 
 
 But, whilst all this is only too true, it is 
 equally true that mistakes^ on the subject of 
 communion with God, prevail so as to prevent 
 it in a great measure, evea when there is much 
 prayer and watchfulness mainlairied. Some do 
 not venture to expect much of the Divine pre- 
 sence, but actually lay their account with walk- 
 ing often in darkness, because they see how often 
 Job, and David, and Asaph, and Jeremiah, and 
 the Old Testament saints, were under the hidings 
 of the Divine countenance. Observing this fact, 
 some believers take for granted, and as a matter 
 of course, that they must experience similar 
 trials of their faith and patience, however they 
 act. 
 
 Now, it is certainly true, that the complaints of 
 the Old Testament saints are only too appro- 
 
AND THE LAMB. 95 
 
 priate to the generality of Christians. There is 
 almost all the darkness and distress of mind, 
 which the Psalms are employed to express, and 
 which they do express so fully and emphatically. 
 But this should not be the case — it is not neces- 
 sarily the case — in the church of Christ. We 
 live under *«a better Covenant,'* and brighter 
 promises ; and therefore it is our own fault, by 
 misconduct or mistake, if we have no more light 
 than those who lived under the old Covenant. 
 If, however, we are willing and trying to walk 
 closely with God, and to enjoy an habitual sense 
 of his presence, why form our ideas or expecta- 
 tions from the state of things under the old Cove- 
 nant ? It certainly does not follow, as a matter 
 of course, that, because David was often in dark- 
 ness, a real Christian must be so too. It is not a 
 matter of necessity that, because Job could not 
 find the Divine presence, we should be unable to 
 find it. These good men had, indeed, some 
 greater excellencies of character than we can 
 pretend to; and, on that ground, were more 
 likely to be honourei;! v/ith more of the Divine 
 presence ; but the dispensations which they lived 
 under did not provide for so much of it as the 
 
96 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 
 
 Gospel does. Christ says to us, *' He that be- 
 lieveth on me shall not walk in darkness, but 
 have the light of life." Accordingly, we do not 
 find the Apostles complaining, as the Prophets 
 did, that ihey were under the hidings of God's 
 face. They complain bitterly of the presence 
 and pressure of a body of sin and death, and of 
 a law in their members which warred against the 
 law of their minds ; but never of an absent God, 
 This matter requires to be looked into mi- 
 nutely, seeing so many form their opinions and 
 expectations of communion with God, from the 
 old, instead of the new. Covenant. Now, we do 
 not take the old Covenant for our principal 
 guide in any thing else. We even boast of our 
 superior light and liberty under the Gospel, and 
 of our nearer and freer access to God, and of out 
 greater privileges. But, where is the reality of 
 these blessings, if we must be as often in dark- 
 ness and distress of soul as David was ? I say 
 " must," because it is certain that we may and 
 shall go without the sun, if we do not walk cir- 
 cumspectly. The Holy Spirit will frown upon 
 sin and sloth as fully under the Gospel as he did 
 under the law, and certainly withhold and with- 
 
AND THE LAMB. 97 
 
 draw the joy of salvation from backsliders. All 
 this is inevitable from the eternal principles of 
 the Divine character and government, because it 
 is the only v^ray of preventing or curing sin and 
 backsliding amongst believers. But still, the real 
 question is, What have they to expect under the 
 Gospel, whose life and conversation *' becometh 
 the Gospel?" Now, as they are not warranted 
 to expect exemption from trials or temptations, 
 it must be more of the Divine presence than was 
 usually enjoyed by the saints under the law. 
 Accordingly, except in those churches which had 
 fallen from their first love and purity, we find, 
 amongst the primitive Christians, no indications 
 of those complaints which were so frequent in 
 the Jewish Church. The sad and piercing cry, 
 " Why hast thou forsaken me ?" — and '' Why art 
 thou silent at the voice of my roaring?" — is 
 never heard from any believer, in any of the 
 New Testament Churches ; a plain proof that, 
 after the veil of the temple was rent from top to 
 bottom, believers had boldness of access into the 
 holy of holies by the blood of Christ, and were 
 thus sure to find God whenever they sought him. 
 Now, from this fact, and not from the case of 
 
 K 
 
98 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 
 
 David, we ought to form our opinions and ex- 
 pectations of communion with God. 
 
 Besides, it is by far too Uttle remembered that 
 David was a prophetic type of the Saviour, and 
 thus gave utterance to his mediatorial sorrows, 
 as well as to his own personal sorrows, — a fact 
 which lessens very much the number of those 
 hidings of the Divine presence which he seems to 
 have experienced. In like manner, their num- 
 ber is still further reduced by the fact, that, under 
 the Jewish dispensation, temporal calamities were 
 considered as hidings of God's countenance ; and 
 delay in removing affliction was spoken of as the 
 shutting out of prayer. It is, therefore, both 
 unnecessary and unwise to make the apparent 
 experience of David the standard of what may be 
 expected from a close walk with God in Christ. 
 By doing so, many have deprived themselves of 
 much comfort, and God of much honour. 
 
 The truth of these remarks is not affected by 
 the melancholy fact, that the enjoyment of the 
 Divine presence, or intimate communion wiih 
 God, is a rare thing in the present day. It cer- 
 tainly is so : but not because God is unwilling 
 to commune with us at the mercy-seat — not 
 
AND THE LAMB. 99 
 
 because there is not ample provision made for 
 nearness and freeness of access to him, — but be- 
 cause so few seek him with their "whole heart," 
 or allow him ime to manifest his presence to 
 their souls. Settle it, therefore, in your own 
 mind, for it is settled already and unalterably in 
 his Word, that you are " not straitened" in God 
 or in the Lamb. Your fellowship may be truly 
 and habitually with them, if you are wilHng to 
 *« walk in the light," as they are in the light. If 
 you are ready, " all things" in heaven " are 
 ready," for sweet communion with God. The 
 Lamb is in the midst of the throne with a censer 
 of meritorious incense, in the shadow of which 
 you may always kneel with safety, and from the 
 fragrance of which your prayers raay always find 
 acceptance, when they are according to the will 
 of God. And the infirmity-helping Spirit is ever 
 at hand to teach you how to pray and what to 
 pray for. *' Enter, ^' therefore, ''into thy closet, 
 and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy 
 Father which is in secret, and thy Father which 
 seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. ''^ 
 
 In order, however, to understand the subject 
 of communion with God aright, more mistakes 
 
100 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 
 
 require to be removed. Now, it is a mistake to 
 imagine that nothing amounts to the Divine pre- 
 sence in prayer, but what produces a holy calm 
 of mind, or a high excitement of feeling. We 
 naturally make our first sensible enjoyments in 
 prayer, the standard by which we judge of our 
 future success. Accordingly, when we do not 
 find that delight nor liberty which we experi- 
 enced formerly, we are apt to conclude that God 
 has hid his face from us, or that we have lost the 
 spirit of devotion. Under this impression, we go 
 heartless and hopeless to our closets, and feel, at 
 times, almost inclined to give up prayer, because 
 we have no longer our usual enjoyment in it. 
 Sometimes, indeed, our hearts are so cold and 
 dead, that it seems an insult to God to attempt 
 prayer in such a frame. We cannot, however, 
 live long without it ; and therefore we are com- 
 pelled to pray, as we can, soon. Our memory, 
 however, clings to the sweet and soothing mo- 
 ments of the days of old, and our souls continue 
 to long for the return of these " times of refresh- 
 ing from the presence of the Lord." Now this is 
 right : but it is wrong to make them the standard 
 of the divine presence. Such ecstatic enjoyment 
 
AND THE LAMB. 101 
 
 in devotion, as that which is sometimes vouch- 
 safed to the soul at the outset^ is not necessary in 
 order to our going on in the walk of faith. For, 
 when we began to follow Christ, there was re- 
 luctance, yea, aversion, of heart to prayer, to be 
 overcome. It was, therefore, necessary, in order 
 to reconcile and attach us to prayer, to grant 
 such enjoyment in it, as should prove to us that 
 it was no vain nor v^^earisorae thing to wait on 
 God, But now we are convinced of this, and 
 ashamed of our former prejudices asjainst devo- 
 tion. We know by experience that it is " good 
 to draw nigh unto God," nor could any one per- 
 suade us that it is insipid or useless work. We 
 are not ashamed to avow that our happiest mo- 
 ments have been spent at his throne. So far, 
 therefore, our first communion with God has 
 answered the purpose of establishing the claims 
 and the habit of prayer : and this being ac- 
 complished, raptures should not be necessary to 
 maintain them, but the steady oar of duty, with- 
 out the full sail of excitement, enough to carry 
 us on. 
 
 This is, however, only the lowest view of the 
 matter, and but introductory to more scriptural 
 K 2 
 
102 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 
 
 views of it. The real fact of the case is — that 
 our first enjoyments in prayer are not always 
 connected with clear views of the whole scheme 
 of salvation. What we knew of it at first, we 
 felt deeply, and prized highly ; but, then, we at- 
 tached quite as much importance to our own 
 feelings, as to the facts which gave rise to them : 
 and drew, perhaps, more of our comfort from 
 them, than from the Gospel itself. We might 
 not, indeed, be aware of this at the time, and 
 may never have intended to do so ; but that we 
 really did so, is evident, from the single fact, that 
 when our feelings began to decline, our comfort 
 decayed with them, although our belief of the 
 Gospel continued almost unaltered ; — a plain 
 proof that we attached, though perhaps uninten- 
 tionally, more importance to the work of the 
 Spirit in us, than to the work of Christ for us. 
 God, I am fully aware, does not make the nice 
 distinctions which theorists do on this subject, nor 
 does he scorn the confusion of ideas which mark 
 our first applications to the Saviour. He can 
 listen with pleasure to the broken music of a 
 " bruised reed," however Sandemanianism may 
 despise it. But, whilst all this is true, it is 
 
AND THE LAMB. ]03 
 
 equally true that He will gradually bring off con- 
 verts from relying on their feeling s, just as he 
 brought them off from relying on their works. 
 In a word, he will make Christ himself, and his 
 finished work, more precious to our souls, than 
 any feelings which they gave rise to. 
 
 Here, then, except the Holy Spirit has been 
 griev?d by an untender walk, is the grand rea- 
 son why God does not continue our sensible and 
 rapturous enjoyments in prayer : we were, un- 
 awares, it may be, but certainly, putting it in 
 the place of the Saviour himself; and therefore 
 God wisely and kindly withheld it as a direct 
 communication from his Spirit, that we might 
 draw all our hope and comfort from the Gospel 
 itself, and learn to live by faith upon Christ as 
 he is revealed to us in the scriptures. God has 
 not, therefore, been hiding his face from you, 
 nor yet shutting out your prayer, because he has 
 not shone upon your soul in prayer as formerly ; 
 but because you required to be more completely 
 '*shut up unto the faith." You were living more 
 by sense than by faith, and thus it became neces- 
 sary to draw and drive you off from changeable 
 feelings to an unchangeable Saviour. Accord- 
 
104 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD, &C. 
 
 ingly, the want of sensible enjoyment has com- 
 pelled you to re-examine the plan of salvation, 
 and to re-consider whether you were seeking to 
 be justified by faith, or, *' as it were, by the 
 works of the law."* 
 
 * See this subject fully treated in the companion to this work, 
 " Conwiunion with God, or a Guide to the Devotional," by the 
 Author. 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 No. VII. 
 
 THE HOPE OF SALVATION THE BEST SAFEGUARD 
 OF THE UNDERSTANDING AGAINST ERROR, AND 
 OF THE HEART AGAINST SIN. 
 
 Alexander the Great having, on one occa- 
 sion, distributed the whole of his private fortune 
 amongst his friends and generals, was asked, why 
 he left nothing for himself: "Hope is still left 
 for me," said the ardent monarch. And, in the 
 affairs of this life, hope is still the last thing 
 which we relinquish. It seats itself upon the 
 throne of the heart in the morning of life, and 
 leaves it only when the heart is breaking under 
 the cold hand of death. It hovers around the 
 cradle of our infancy, when *« it doth not appear 
 what we shall be ;" and over the coffin of our 
 old age, when it doth not appear what we are. 
 
106 THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 
 
 Hope is the sun that rules the "day," and the 
 moon that rules the *« night" of life. It is the 
 rainbow which gilds the clouds of our calamity, 
 and the morning star which leads on our brighter 
 prospects. In a word, hope is to the soul, what 
 the soul is to the body — the mainspring of life 
 and action. Take it away, and soon the energies 
 of the body and the mind wither and perish. 
 Hopeless labour is all fatigue ; hopeless enterprise 
 is unsteady ; hopeless suffering is overwhelming. 
 Whatever, therefore, may be said in theory, 
 against hoping too much, and whatever may be 
 proved from experience, against the indulgence 
 of sanguine hopes, the sober fact is, that hope is 
 essential to success in all the business of life; 
 because, without it, diligence is weak and reso- 
 lution wavering. The business of life could not 
 go on, nor the trials of life be sustained, if man- 
 kind did not wear the helmet of hope. It is their 
 strength and safeguard amidst the duties and suf- 
 ferings of the present state of being. 
 
 All this is equally true of the hope of salva- 
 tion : it is the helmet of the Christian, which, 
 by protecting his head from mental error, fortifies 
 his heart against temptation, distraction and des- 
 
THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 107 
 
 pendency. His very character is both formed and 
 confirmed chiefly by the hope of salvation, and 
 rises or falls as that hope is high or low. When 
 his hopes are dim or languid, duty, and especially 
 devotion, languishes with them ; when they are 
 bright and firm, all duties are pleasant, and all 
 trials tolerable. He has then heart and hand to 
 do and endure the will of God. But when the 
 hopes of a Christian decline and fade away, until 
 he hardly knows what to think of his case, the 
 effect is, that although he will not throw up his 
 profession, nor risk his character, he will not 
 maintain either so well as he did whilst he was 
 sustained by a hope full of immortality. He may 
 still pray in his family and in his closet ; but not 
 with a truly devotional spirit. He may still con- 
 tinue regular in his attendance upon all divine 
 ordinances; but he will not come to them with 
 his former relish or expectation : for hope is the 
 very soul of devotion and holiness, and therefore 
 they abound or subside together. Hence the im- 
 portance and necessity of maintaining the hope 
 of salvation. 
 
 Now, it is a curious fact, that the truly serious 
 are the most '* slow of heart" to take up, or to 
 
108 THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 
 
 keep up, the hope of salvation. They are the 
 last to lay hold of it, and the first to let it go, in 
 their own case. Indeed, real converts are almost 
 the only class who require to be urged to cherish 
 hope. The generality, even of the careless and 
 undecided, hope for salvation, just as they hope 
 for any thing else, as a matter of course. " As I 
 hope to be saved," is the usual mode of expres- 
 sion, when any doubtful assertion is confirmed. 
 Thus it is, — we seldom see a careless man who 
 is afraid to hope for salvation ; and we never see 
 a godly man, who has not been afraid [to hope 
 for it in his own case. Indeed, it is with a timid 
 heart and a trembling hand, that all true peni- 
 tents lay hold of the hope of eternal life. Even 
 when they see both their way and their welcome 
 to "the hope set before them" in the Gospel, 
 their sense of utter unworthiness almost unfits 
 them for hoping freely or fully. And even when 
 they venture to cherish " a good hope through 
 grace," they are almost ashamed and afraid to 
 acknowledge it to others, or, indeed, to them- 
 selves. Now, if such timidity and hesitation 
 were as wise as they are amiable, it would be 
 wise to let them alone ; for any thing that would 
 
THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 109 
 
 change them into rashness or flippant boldness 
 would be highly unwise and wicked. They may, 
 however, be renewed, without being replaced by 
 presumption or boasting. Paul's humility was 
 not destroyed nor lessened, when he ventured to 
 say of Christ, " He loved me, and gave himself 
 for wje." In fact, the belief of this deepened his 
 humility, by increasing his happiness. The joy 
 of salvation was "the strength" of his heart, in 
 all the holy principles, in which it was strongest. 
 How did he pass so uncontaminated through 
 a world lying in wickedness; and so unshaken 
 through all the clamour and sophistry of contro- 
 versy; and so triumphant through all his trials 
 and persecutions ? He wore the hope of sal- 
 vation, as a helmet upon his head ; and his un- 
 derstanding being thus protected against mental 
 error, his heart and conscience were fortified 
 against temptation. And thus alone can you 
 keep *' the faith," or continue the *'good 
 fight;" for, without the hope of salvation to 
 guard your judgment, your principles may be 
 so upset or unsettled, by false doctrine, as to 
 yield no enjoyment under trouble, and no 
 strength in the hour of temptation. 
 
 L 
 
110 THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 
 
 It is, I am aware, more common to encourage 
 believers in their work and warfare, by per- 
 suading them to keep up heart, than by urging 
 them to guard well their understanding and 
 judgment. But the heart cannot be kept up, 
 if the head is not kept safe from the assaults of 
 error. Our intellectual powers must be pro- 
 tected, if we would keep our moral powers pure 
 or vigorous ; for we cannot feel aright, if we 
 judge wrong; nor act aright, if we choose 
 wrong ; nor maintain a good conscience, if we 
 give way to a disordered imagination. Now, the 
 grand security for a "sound mind," and through 
 that, for a ** pure heart," is to ^^put on for a 
 helmet the hope of salvation^ That hope, by 
 entrenching the understanding in the truth of 
 the Gospel, will best lay and keep open the 
 heart to all the holy and consoling influence of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 The point on which these general remarks 
 bear is this ; we may be so tempted by infidelity 
 and false doctrines, and get so entangled with 
 doubts or disputes, as to be unable to maintain 
 our ground. Now, as every one cannot pursue 
 that course of reading, nor follow out that train 
 
THE HOPE OF SALVATION. Ill 
 
 of reasoning, which would clear up all specu- 
 lative difficulties, it is of the utmost importance 
 to be familiar with some single and simple fact 
 of revelation, which shall be an "anchor to the 
 soul, sure and stedfast,*' amidst the winds of doc- 
 trine, and the fluctuations of opinion ; and which 
 shall regjulate the mind, as the masrnetism of the 
 pole does the motions of the needle. Now, this 
 security is to be found in " the hope of salva- 
 tion." The man who understands the salvation 
 of God, and cherishes the hope of it, has, within 
 himself, a retreat from which no sophistry nor 
 error can drive or draw him away. 
 
 Is he tempted to Infidelity? Its objections 
 may be plausible, and its sarcasms perplexing, 
 to him. He may be unable to answer or to ana- 
 lyze them in detail. They may throw a momen- 
 tary spell upon his spirit, and a mist on his 
 vision : but he will see, at a glance, and feel with 
 all the keenness of a sensation, that in6delity has 
 nothing to offer, which can be compared with the 
 "great salvation" it would rob him of. For, if 
 present hope and eternal happiness are his ob- 
 jects, he has securities for them in the Bible, 
 infinitely stronger than natural religion can give 
 
112 THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 
 
 to her votaries, for the vague prospects which 
 they cherish. Thus, the moment he looks to 
 the hope of salvation, he perceives that the light 
 of nature reveals no such heaven beyond the 
 grave, nor ratifies any one hope which it is said 
 to inspire. So long, therefore, as eternal happi- 
 ness is dear to him, his faith in the Gospel is 
 impregnable to all the assaults of scepticism, be- 
 cause he must be a losei' by that system. Thus, 
 the single and simple reflection, — I could gain 
 nothing, and I might lose all, by relinquishing 
 the Bible, — enables him to possess his soul in 
 patience, amidst all the mysteries of revelation, 
 and all the wiles of its enemies. 
 
 Nor is this all : the man who is familiar with, 
 and confirmed in, the hope of the " great salva- 
 tion," soon perceives that its character is pecu- 
 liar; so peculiar, that it has no parallel nor 
 semblance in any rival system. He may not 
 know, in detail, the moral character of ancient 
 heathenism, nor the precise nature of that heaven 
 which philosophy dreamt of; but from all that 
 he hears, even from the eulogists of the philoso- 
 phers, it is self-evident to him that they never 
 thought of such a salvation as the Gospel reveals. 
 
THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 113 
 
 Indeed, the more he is plied with their boasted 
 discoveries, the more will he feel persuaded, that 
 it never " entered the heart of man to conceive 
 what God hath laid up for them that love him.*' 
 Thus, the humblest believer is ball-proof against 
 all the array of infidel philosophy ; because he 
 has only to observe, that its best morals do not 
 amount, even in theory, to conformity to the 
 Divine image ; nor its highest purity to true holi- 
 ness ; nor its brightest prospects to any thing like 
 the heaven of the Bible. Its very Platos are vile, 
 when compared with the Apostles of the Lamb, 
 and its Socrateses are but children in their com- 
 pany. In a word, he can find nothing, true or 
 false, in any system of natural religion, which 
 even borders upon the sublime idea of a salva- 
 tion which embraces the sanctification of *' soul, 
 body, and spirit," for eternity! All human 
 schemes propose nothing beyond the amendment 
 of human nature ; for the Gospel alone proposes 
 to make us ^^hohj as God is holy^ We have, 
 therefore, in order to be unmoved by ail the parade 
 of learned scepticism, only to keep before us the 
 holy character of the great salvation ; that, like 
 the spear of Ithuriel, will always detect Satan, 
 L 2 
 
ll'l THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 
 
 even when he transforms himself into an angel 
 of the Light of Nature. 
 
 In Hke manner, Is the behever tempted to 
 Unitarianism ? He is perfectly safe, so long as 
 he wears, as a helmet, the hope of that salvation 
 which is revealed in the Gospel. His knowledge 
 of criticism, or of logic, or of ecclesiastical his- 
 tory, may be too slight to assist his faitli. But, 
 even if he is unable to draw upon any other source 
 than his English Bible, the very heaven which it 
 reveals will render his faith impregnable to the 
 whole artillery of Socinian learning and Sophis- 
 try. They may puzzle him with the ambigui- 
 ties of a figurative text, or set him fast by some 
 sweeping assertion, or perplex him by an appeal 
 to his common sense, which the uncommon sense 
 of an angel could not answer by dint of mere 
 reasoning; but still he is safe, and may be tri- 
 umphant, if he wield the character of the heaven 
 of the Bible manfully. Neither the blustering 
 assertions, nor the sleek insinuations of Unita- 
 rianism, can move him, while he takes his stand 
 on "the sea of glass before the throne ;" because 
 there, he hears songs and sentiments, which give 
 the lie direct to both the letter and spirit of Uni- 
 
THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 115 
 
 tarian worship. There, all the armies of heaven, 
 at the same time and in the same terms, adore 
 both God and the Lamb. Their posture is as 
 lowly, and their song as lofty, when they worship 
 the Son, as when they worship the Father. And, 
 in regard to salvation, all '*the spirits of just men 
 made perfect" ascribe it entirely and exclusively 
 to the blood of Christ. Thus, there rushes down 
 from all the hearts and harps of heaven, one 
 uniform and everlasting stream of equal glory to 
 God and the Lamb, and of adoring gratitude for 
 the Atonement. And, then, all this goes forward 
 in the presence, and with the permission, and 
 therefore by the appointment, of God : for nei- 
 ther angels nor saints would dare to worship as 
 they do, in heaven, if it were not ** the will of 
 Godf^ that they should honour the Son even as 
 they honour the Father ; and that the Atonement 
 should have all the glory of salvation. Nothing 
 but the Divine will could establish such worship 
 amongst perfect spirits ; and it is self-evident that 
 God would not have willed it, if it were not 
 agreeable to the eternal facts of his nature, and 
 to the moral principles of his government. 
 Thus the believer has all heaven on his side. 
 
116 THE HOPE OF SALVATIOX. 
 
 in defence of his hope of salvation through the 
 merits of a divine and atoning Saviour. If 
 therefore, he cannot quote scholar against scho- 
 lar, nor antiquity against modern upstarts, nor 
 the canons of criticism against sciohsts, he can 
 quote the " New Song" against all the reason- 
 ings and railings of his opponents, and appeal 
 to "the general assembly" of saints and angels, 
 for the truth of his sentiments. That army of 
 the living God cannot, he is sure, mislead nor 
 deceive him ; and as he knows, from their ex- 
 ample, what is the " will" of God in heaven, 
 and how it is "done" there, he is equally sure 
 that, whilst adoring God and the Lamb, and 
 glorying only in the Cross, he is doing the will 
 of God *'on earth" exactly "as it is done in 
 heaven." Thus the great principles of a Chris- 
 tian's faith are as infallible as the worship of 
 heaven. We have only to keep clearly before 
 our minds the character of the great salvation, 
 which is — that it is blood-bought, in order to see 
 at a glance that Unitarianism is as unlike it as 
 Mahometanism is. 
 
 In like manner, Is the Believer tempted to 
 Antinomianism ? He is perfectly safe against 
 
THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 117 
 
 all its insinuating snares, while he maintains the 
 hope of that salvation which is revealed in the 
 Gospel. It is a holy salvation, if it is any thing. 
 A salvation from sin, not in sin. How any one 
 can overlook this self-evident fact, is most ama- 
 zing ; for it is written, as with sun-beams, on 
 every principle and promise of the Gospel. It 
 is, however, both overlooked and practically de- 
 nied by some who profess the firmest attachment 
 to the doctrines of grace. They even boast that 
 the divine law is not binding upon them as a 
 rule of life ; that they are free to live as they 
 like; that sin can do them no real injury, and 
 that God does not see any iniquity in them ! I 
 once heard one of this school declare, from the 
 pulpit, that if he were to go out and commit a 
 murder, the sin, although it might bring him to 
 the gallows, would not only not risk his salva- 
 tion, but it could not for a moment bring even 
 the shadow of a doubt upon his mind as to the 
 certainty of his salvation. In this form, Anti- 
 nomianism is its own antidote, and any thing 
 but a temptation to believers. This, however, 
 is not the form which it usually assumes: it 
 comes before us speaking great things of Christ 
 
118 THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 
 
 and grace, and ascribing all the glory of salva- 
 tion to them alone. It almost professes to open 
 the Lamb's Book of Life, and to read therein 
 the very names of its adherents. It takes up the 
 case of the weary and heavy-laden sinner, and 
 interprets all his feelings into proofs of his elec- 
 tion and eternal justification. It goes into all 
 the worst workings of the heart, and teaches 
 those who are conscious of them, that they must 
 be the children of God, because they notice 
 these things. Now, as all the truly serious are 
 conscious of much indwelling sin, and of many 
 imperfections ; and as these things often destroy 
 or damp their hope of salvation ; and as they 
 naturally wish to feel assured of their safety; 
 it is a strong temptation to them, when any one 
 offers to prove their election from the very facts 
 which lead them to doubt it. And the proposal 
 to do so is the more plausible, because the pre- 
 tence is, that the sole design is to exalt the 
 Saviour and to humble the sinner — to glorify 
 God, and give peace through the blood of the 
 Cross — to endear the everlasting Covenant, and 
 honour the Eternal Spirit. All this is so like 
 the glorious Gospel, and embraces so much of 
 
THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 119 
 
 its grand design, that one can hardly think of 
 suspecting its truth or its tendency. And as 
 the truly serious do not intend to apply this 
 offered relief to any bad purpose, but merely 
 to get over their doubts and fears by it ; and 
 as they wish for no liberty to sin, — this easy 
 and speedy way of reaching assurance becomes 
 very tempting to them, especially if they are 
 under a ministry which does not clearly show 
 them "a better way." For the fact is, an 
 awakened conscience and a wounded spirit will 
 seek relief somewhere ; and, if they do not 
 find it in low doctrinal sentiments, they will 
 grasp at it in high, and take it from any 
 thing rather than sink into despair. If, there- 
 fore, they find that the ministry which has 
 wounded, does not heal them, or that it makes 
 salvation by faith appear quite as difficult to 
 obtain as salvation by works would be, and 
 thus brings them no nearer to their object; it 
 is no wonder if they try another ministry, and 
 even welcome one which turns their doubts 
 and perplexities, as well as their desires, into 
 proofs of faith and tokens of safety. 
 
 It is in this way that many are drawn into 
 
120 THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 
 
 Antinomian principles. Their object, at first, 
 was chiefly to get hold of something which 
 would give rest to their souls ; and, as that 
 kind of preaching which makes saving faith 
 appear quite as impossible as perfect obedi- 
 ence, did not relieve them, but rather tantalized 
 them by a remedy which, whilst it was called 
 free, was kept back until their works should 
 demonstrate their faith, they were glad to grasp 
 at any thing which promised speedier relief. 
 Accordingly, when they were assured that their 
 fears and desires, and even their very doubts, 
 were the work of the Spirit in them ; and that 
 his work in the soul is the warrant to believe 
 that the death of Christ and the decree of 
 God were for the soul ; — this nostrum met all 
 their difficulties. For as they could say, with 
 perfect truth, that they felt and desired, under 
 the Gospel, as they had never done before ; 
 and as this state of mind was declared to be 
 the effect of Divine influence, and thus a proof 
 of their election and redemption ; — such doc- 
 trine might well please them. But, at this 
 stage of their experience, the Gospel itself 
 would have pleased them better, if it had been 
 
THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 121 
 
 as plainly brought before them ; because, then, 
 they were in search of nothing but the hope of 
 salvation, and wanted no rehef from the rules, 
 but only from the cursej of the law. Had 
 they, therefore, been directed, at that moment, 
 to the Divine testimony concerning the per- 
 son and work of Christ; and had they been 
 shown clearly, from the Scriptures, that the 
 cordial belief of that testimony is saving faith ; 
 and that faith itself warrants immediate hope ; 
 this would have met all their difficulties, with- 
 out laying asleep their watchfulness, or their 
 fear of sin. 
 
 Well: you see all this, if you have taken 
 up the hope of salvation at the Cross, simply 
 by relying on Christ for it. You have, there- 
 fore, no occasion to meddle with the unscrip- 
 tural nostrums of those who put the work of 
 the Spirit in the room of the work of Christ, 
 and give that place to election which the Cross 
 alone occupies in the Gospel. You have no 
 occasion to shift the position of things in the 
 ** well-ordered" Covenant, before you can enter 
 into the ark of it. *'Ye have not so learned 
 Christ," from these pages, as to feel it neces- 
 
122 THE HOPE OF SALVATION. 
 
 sary to have another warrant than the Word of 
 God, for believing on Christ for your own 
 justification. Whatever comfort you want, you 
 can find it more readily and more abundantly 
 in the single fact, " that he who belie veth hath 
 eternal life," than in all the boasted consolations 
 of Antinomianism, — the very first principle of 
 which is wrong, inasmuch as it substitutes feel- 
 ings for faith. And whenever you want to 
 see the grand fallacy and infamy of this sys- 
 tem, you have only to observe that the very 
 first promise of that new Covenant, which it 
 pretends to venerate so much, is at utter and 
 eternal variance with the rejection of the law 
 as a rule of life. That first promise is, **I 
 will put 7ny laws in their hearts, and write 
 them in their minds, saith the Lord:'' a fact 
 which is fatal to all unholy applications of the 
 doctrines of grace. In a word, real Antino- 
 mianism is the hope of a salvation from that 
 holy salvation, which is "the end" of election, 
 redemption, and regeneration. 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 No. VIII. 
 
 DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 
 
 No man knows himself, who is not in the 
 habit of examining himself; and no man ex- 
 amines himself impartially, who does not place 
 himself under the omniscient eye of God, and 
 thus invite and submit to divine scrutiny. Our 
 hearts are too deep to be fathomed by our 
 conscience, and too deceitful to be unmasked 
 by our judgment. Indeed, the heart can blind 
 and pervert both the judgment and the con- 
 science. Hence the necessity of carrying the 
 whole soul to be searched and tried by God, 
 even after all our efforts to examine ourselves : 
 for, until we are alone and upon our knees 
 before the Searcher of hearts, we are both 
 liable and sure to impose on ourselves. We 
 
124 DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 
 
 may, indeed, know, from observation and ex- 
 perience, what is our weak side, or our be- 
 setting sin, and thus have a general idea of 
 our real character; but how weak that side is, or 
 how strong that sin is, we are not fully aware, 
 until we look at them in the light of God. 
 Accordingly, we have found them to be greater, 
 and have been betrayed by them oftener, than 
 we suspected at first. They have carried us 
 further than we calculated upon, and led us 
 into more wrong steps than we anticipated, at 
 first. Yes; and both our weak side and our 
 besetting sin, if left to themselves, are quite 
 capable of hurrying us as much beyond any 
 evil which we now fear, as they were of draw- 
 ing us into those evils which we nov/ deplore. 
 For, what our hearts are thus led to by their 
 own propensities, is only a specimen of the di- 
 rection, rather than of the lengths, they are in- 
 clined to go, when allowed to take their own 
 way. Now, if we must say already, that our 
 hearts have gone too far astray ; and if we be- 
 lieve that they are naturally «* deceitful above 
 all things, and desperately wicked;" — it is high 
 time to take measures for the prevention and 
 
DEVOTIONAL SEI.F-EXAMINATION. 125 
 
 cure of their evil tendencies. And, for these 
 purposes, the habit of self-examination in the 
 sight of the omniscient God, is equally neces- 
 sary and useful. 
 
 David furnishes an example of this devo- 
 tional habit, which will illustrate at once these 
 introductory hints. He was an attentive ob- 
 server and scrutinizer of himself, especially after 
 his restoration to the Divine favour. From 
 that time his '*soul" was, as it were, "conti- 
 nually in his hand;" his "spirit made diligent 
 search;*' he "communed" with his own heart, 
 even "upon his bed," and considered his ways. 
 Now, this was self-examination, in the ordinary 
 sense of the duty ; but he did not stop there. 
 He knew and believed the deceitfulness of his 
 heart too well, to trust its verdict in his own 
 cause; and, therefore, followed up his own 
 scrutiny by praying, " Search, me, O God, and 
 know my heart ; try me and know my thoughts ; 
 and see if there be any wicked way in me, and 
 lead me in the way everlasting." Thus, that 
 there might be no deception, he solemnly put 
 his case into the hands, and under the eye, of 
 m2 
 
126 DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 
 
 God. This was impartial, because devotional, 
 self-examination. 
 
 Having referred to this example, as an il- 
 lustration of the subject, it may be well to 
 glance at the principles of it. Now, the prayer, 
 *' Search me and try me," recognizes, as an un- 
 questionable truth, the omniscience of Jehovah, 
 and proceeds upon the solemn fact, that '*all 
 things are naked and open to the eyes of Him 
 with whom they have to do." It was, how- 
 ever, by realizing the scrutiny of this omnis- 
 cience in his own case, that David understood 
 how it extended to all creatures, times, and 
 places. '* Thou hast searched and known me," 
 — is the point from which he started, in his way 
 to the sublime and awful conclusion, " The 
 darkness and the light are both alike to Thee." 
 And the conclusion is just; for if David's heart 
 in all its recesses, were naked and open unto 
 God, all hearts and all things must be equally 
 visible to Him ; because the power which can 
 search one, can search all; and the reason for 
 searching any heart, holds good in the case of 
 all hearts. God is the Judge of all ; and, as the 
 
DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 127 
 
 secrets of every heart will be brought into judg- 
 ment, none can escape his notice. Each may, 
 therefore, say to himself, *' Lord, thou hast 
 searched and known me;" others may guess 
 v/hat I am, from what 1 seem ; and argue from 
 what my life is, what my heart must be : " but lo, 
 Lord, thou knowest it altogether ;'' thou art not 
 deceived, nor at any loss, whoever may be so ! 
 
 Now, with this solemn conviction clinging to 
 him like his shadow — why did David pray thus, 
 " Search me, God, and know my heart ; try 
 me, and know my thoughts .>" He had just 
 acknowledged that God had done so already, 
 and fully ; for he does not say. Search me more 
 than thou hast ever done. The reason is obvi- 
 ous : God searches all ; but he does not lead 
 all ** in the way everlasting." Some are given 
 up to their own hearts' lusts, and thus led cap- 
 tive by the devil, at his will, when they refuse to 
 be led by the Spirit. David knew this : and, as 
 his object was to walk in the way of salvation, 
 his prayer was, that he might be so searched as 
 to escape every " wicked way." And there is 
 a special and gracious searching of the heart, the 
 results of which God shows to them who fear 
 
128 DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 
 
 Him ; thus discovering to them, what he dis- 
 covers in them. Not, indeed, that He shows 
 them at once all that He sees in them : the most 
 holy could not sustain the full sight of all the 
 plagues of their own hearts. God, therefore, 
 reveals them gradually to his people, that the 
 appaUing sight may not overwhelm their hopes 
 of sanctification. He does, however, show so 
 much, from time to time, as to convince be- 
 lievers that their own hearts are not to be trusted, 
 even to their own examination ; but require, in 
 order to be upright in all things, to be searched 
 by the eye of Omniscience. 
 
 Now, it is a good sign, when we are afraid of 
 self-deception, and court the scrutiny of God ; 
 when we are willing to know the worst of our 
 own case, and desirous to judge impartially; 
 and when, for this purpose, we call in the eye 
 of God to search us. For, by thus examining 
 ourselves, and submitting to Divine examina- 
 tion, Believers are distinguished. 
 
 First, From the Formalist, who takes no 
 notice of the state of his heart in religion. It 
 is, indeed, strange that any can be so infatuated, 
 as to forget the necessity of worshipping a Spirit, 
 
DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 129 
 
 " in spirit and in truth :" but, alas ! it is for- 
 gotten and overlooked. Many, like the Jews 
 of old, go to the sanctuary of God, and *' sit as 
 his people sit, and hear as they hear ; but their 
 hearts are far from him.'* This is no sweeping 
 charge : for, if their hearts were ** right with 
 God," they would worship him at home as well 
 as in the sanctuary ; and in the sanctuary by 
 sacraments, as well as by prayer or praise. But 
 how (ew compass the family or the sacramental 
 altar, or retire to pray in secret to Him who seeth 
 in secret ! All this may, indeed, be done, by 
 mere formalists; but, when all this is neglected, 
 there certainly is none of the " power" of god- 
 liness, nor any habit of self-examination. It is 
 therefore, a good sign, when the claims of all 
 duties are seriously weighed, and the state of the 
 heart towards and in them is chiefly regarded. 
 This distinguishes Believers, 
 
 Secondly, From the Reckless Professor, 
 who dare not search his own heart. Some have 
 the hardihood to continue at the sacrament, even 
 after they have discovered that their convictions 
 were not conversion, nor their first resolutions, 
 principles. They depart from their closets and 
 
130 DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 
 
 give up the power of godliness ; but there is no 
 departure from the Lord's table. Conscience 
 says to them, " Keep back, or begin on new 
 principles;" and thus, like Balaam's angel, 
 waves a drawn sword between them and a sacra- 
 ment for which they have no relish. But Pride 
 says, " Keep your place and your name; defeat 
 suspicion, by defying it ; keep up appearances, 
 whatever it cost, for it is too mortifying to ex- 
 pose yourself by your own act of withdrawing !'* 
 Now, in such a case, the heart dare not examine 
 itself before God, but is afraid of its own whis- 
 pers, and conscious that a full disclosure of its 
 secrets, even to itself, would be almost as humi- 
 liating as the exposure of them to others. Thus, 
 the matter will not bear thinking of, and there- 
 fore appearances are kept up at all hazards, by 
 shutting the eyes upon the hazards. 
 
 This fearful state of mind must not, however, 
 be confounded with those occasional misgivings 
 of heart, which the serious feel in regard to the 
 reality of their own conversion, and their right 
 to the sacrament. There is an immense differ- 
 ence between habitual recklessness, and occasi- 
 onal disrelish ; especially when the want of relish 
 
DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 131 
 
 is deeply deplored, and the causes of it are 
 searched out. All is not wrong, while self-exa- 
 mination is kept up, and while what is wrong is 
 dreaded and hated. Like an erring, but affec- 
 tionate child, a believer may feel himself in dis- 
 grace ; but, while he feels out of his element, 
 and is trying to return into his rest, his case is not 
 hopelf'ss, because it is not heartless nor heedless. 
 In like manner, the habit of self-examination in 
 the presence of God distinguishes its adherents. 
 
 Thirdly, From the Inconsistent Professor, 
 who is unwiUing to be led out of every '* wicked 
 way." David prayed thus — ** See if there be any 
 wicked way in me, and lead me in the way ever- 
 lasting." Thus he was so jealous of his heart, 
 that he suspected that some wicked way would be 
 overlooked, unless God prevented it. Now, this 
 is the grand characteristic of " faith unfeigned :" 
 it is impartial, and willing to be kept back from 
 all sin. A real Christian may, indeed, feel a 
 strong bias to some of his old sins, and a shrink- 
 ing from some duties ; and, alas ! for a time, he 
 may even risk the experiment of serving " two 
 masters" by turns ; but when he finds, — which 
 he soon does by bitter experience, —that half 
 
132 DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 
 
 measures will not do, and that a divided heart 
 misses enjoyment in religion, and that yielding 
 to temptation or sloth is destruction to hope and 
 peace, — he is glad to retrace his steps to the nar- 
 row way again, and to yield himself unreservedly 
 to God and duty. Now, although this is not done 
 without a struggle, nor always soon, — it is done, 
 eventually, by all who are attentive to their own 
 hearts, and to the baneful influence of inconsis- 
 tencies upon them. The self-examining believer 
 determines to be consistent, whatever it cost in 
 effort or sacrifice. He would rather suffer, than 
 sin against God and a good conscience. Now, 
 this high and holy tone of gracious principle and 
 godly practice, is acquired chiefly by scrutinizing 
 the heart in the presence of God. It is not ac- 
 quired from the social intercourse of Christian 
 friends, nor even from heart-searching sermons : 
 these, indeed, suggest the necessity of self-exa- 
 mination, and are the chief means of leading to 
 it; but it is in the act of devotional examination, 
 that God shows with "power" what is wrong, 
 and with "glory" what is right. Accordingly, 
 it was in the closet, and whilst retired within 
 ourselves, and whilst realizing the presence of 
 
DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 133 
 
 God, and whilst looking at all sin in the light of 
 eternity,— it was whilst thus engaged, that every 
 sin, fault, and wrong habit, rose before us in 
 hideous and horrid deformity ! Then we wept, 
 and wondered that we ever thought lightly of 
 " any wicked way ;" and felt our souls swelling 
 up in holy indignation against all vice and vanity. 
 Apd, by the same process, we acquired those 
 clear and affecting views of the way of holiness, 
 which won us into it. Whilst we looked at '' the 
 narrow way," in the company of those who shun 
 it, or in the light of worldly maxims, we thought 
 it too narrow, and saw many lions in the way, 
 and felt as if it were impossible to walk in it : 
 but when we retired to our closets, and betook 
 ourselves to prayer, that we might examine and 
 weigh these mingled feelings and objections, 
 which looked so formidable in company, — the 
 path of holiness expanded before us as it really 
 is — guarded by eternal Providence, gilded with 
 great and precious promises, graced by the pre- 
 sence of many illustrious pilgrims, glorious with 
 the footsteps of the Saviour himself, and termi- 
 nating directly in the heaven of heavens. We 
 saw, also, that none sank on *' the way everlast- 
 
 N 
 
134 DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 
 
 ing," nor perished at the end of it, who kept in 
 it; and that those were happiest who adhered to 
 it most strictly; and that all were ruined who 
 forsook it; and, between this twofold " cloud 
 of witnesses,*' we resolved to follow holiness. 
 Thus we have often come from our closets, say- 
 ing to ourselves, '* Let whoever will, try danger- 
 ous experiments, the example of the Saviour 
 shall be our guiding pillar of cloud by day, and 
 of fire by night: — our hearts are "fixed" by 
 searching, and we will *' follow the Lamb in the 
 path of regeneration." 
 
 It is thus that the habit of devotional self-exa- 
 mination sets and keeps both sin and duty in 
 their true light.- It is, however, wanted for other 
 purposes. Accordingly, God says, " Examine 
 yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove 
 your ownselves; know ye not your ownselves, 
 how that Christ is in you, except ye be repro- 
 bates;" that is, without proof of the Saviour's 
 presence. The word " Reprobates" is not 
 used here in the modern sense. It means 
 now, in common language, *' reckless profli- 
 gates," or *' abandoned sinners ;" and is sus- 
 pected by some, who judge the sense from the 
 sound of it, to countenance the doctrine of Rc" 
 
DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 135 
 
 probatioUf as they call it. They mean by that, 
 the ruin and loss of the soul by the sovereign 
 decree of God ; — a doctrine not even breathed in 
 the Bible. What it teaches, is, the judicial re- 
 probation of those who weary out the patience of 
 God by impenitence and rebellion. Such he aban- 
 dons eventually to a reprobate mind, and to a 
 seared conscience, and to their own hearts' lusts; 
 and thus to ruin. But the ruin comes not from 
 a sovereign decree, but from the sentence of the 
 law and the sanctions of the Gospel. This is 
 the real state of the case ; and therefore a man 
 is not a reprobate, in this sense, even if he is 
 not in the faith, yet, and although Christ is not 
 in him. I mean, that he is not, on that account 
 decreed to ruin, nor given up by God. All unbe- 
 lievers are, indeed, condemned already ; but it is 
 because of unbelief, and not beyond redemption. 
 This being understood, the most timid have no 
 occasion to shrink from examining themselves 
 by the test applied to the Corinthians ; for even 
 if you should not be able to prove, to your own 
 satisfaction, that you are in the faith, nor that 
 Christ is in you — still, whilst Christ is upon the 
 throne of grace, and whilst faith is the gift of 
 
136 DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 
 
 God, your case is not hopeless. This, however, 
 is but the lowest view of the case. Those who 
 are in real earnest to be found in Christ, are not 
 utter strangers either to the exercise of faith or 
 to the indwelling of Christ in the heart. They 
 may be afraid to call their own believing faith; 
 and may not understand the precise meaning 
 of Christ's indwelling presence : but it does not 
 follow, from these mistakes, that they are without 
 proofs of faith or love. They have often more 
 proofs of both than they imagine, or are aware 
 of, until they examine themselves. — Now, so 
 may you. The first sight of the question, " Am 
 I in the faith ?" may startle you; because, know- 
 ing faith to be the point on which salvation turns, 
 and feeling your own unworthiness of so great 
 a salvation, you are afraid to say '* Yes.'" But, 
 observe: you are equally afraid to say *' JVb.'* 
 You leave the question unanswered in words; 
 but you continue to act as if you were " in the 
 faith." You do not cease to hope, even when 
 you hesitate to say that you believe. You even 
 strive to live as a believer, although you do not 
 venture to assume the name. Yea, more : no 
 one could persuade you to give up your habits of 
 
DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 137 
 
 looking to, and leaning upon, the Saviour. You 
 shrink with horror from the bare idea of disown- 
 ing or deserting him. You have no wish to for- 
 sake him ; and when you feel tempted to do so, 
 your unfeigned answer is, " Lord, to whom shall 
 I go? Thou only hast the words of eternal life." 
 Accordingly, since you saw your need of an in- 
 terest; in his blood, and felt the value of salvation, 
 you have been unwilling and unable to forget 
 Christ. Thoughts of him, and desires after him, 
 have followed you like your shadow, more or less, 
 every day ; and nothing would please you more 
 than to be able to think and feel in regard to him, 
 as you wish. 
 
 Well ; this being the case, you cannot begin 
 too soon to ** examine" whether you ** be in the 
 faith ;" for the result is sure to be favourable. 
 Yes ; examination in the sight of God will dis- 
 cover to you, that it has been given to you, on 
 behalf of Christ, to believe on him with the 
 heart unto salvation. But nothing else will dis- 
 cover this, Co your permanent satisfaction. You 
 may gather, from these marks of faith, a general 
 idea that you are in the faith ; but the conclu- 
 sion, even if just, will not last long. It must be 
 N 2 
 
138 DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 
 
 drawn upon your knees, and with your heart 
 bared to the inspection of God, if you would 
 have it lasting. And, in his presence, as in the 
 prospect of death, the question, " Am T in the 
 faith?'* is fairly met. The soul dare not trifle 
 nor equivocate, when placed under the eye of 
 Omniscience ; but must go fully into the inquiry. 
 It spreads and pours itself out, all over the ques- 
 tion. And when, in this light, it is seen that the 
 cordial belief of the Gospel, for holy purposes, 
 is saving faith ; and when it is felt, through all 
 the soul, that we do believe its truth, and love its 
 holiness ; — our satisfaction is unspeakable ! For 
 then, we know and feel persuaded that we are 
 not flattering ourselves, nor judging rashly. The 
 whole matter is so fully laid before God, and God 
 is so fully before our minds, that self-deception 
 seems impossible. We have *' the witness" in 
 ourselves, that, like the first believers, we '' gladly 
 receive" the Gospel. We are, indeed, amazed, 
 and thrown into almost breathless silence, during 
 these hallowed moments, to find that believing is 
 faith, and that faith itself warrants the hope of 
 salvation there and then. But we do find all 
 this to be true ! All our recollections, both of 
 
DEVOTIONAL SELF-EXAMINATION. 139 
 
 the letter and spirit of the Scriptures, rush in to 
 confirm it. The whole Bible rises before us as 
 one brilliant and unbroken illustration of the 
 grand fact — that salvation *« is of faith, that it 
 might be by grace." And, having seen all this 
 in the light of the Divine presence, we retire 
 from our closets with the old apostolic melody in 
 our hearts and lips, " Therefore^ being justified 
 by faith, we have peace with God^ 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 No. IX. 
 
 THE TEMPTATIONS AND FIERY DARTS OF SATAN. 
 
 Amongst those words with which the truly 
 serious associate the most awful and alarming 
 ideas, the word Temptation is one of the 
 chief. And well it may make every ear tingle, 
 and every heart tremble ! Temptation is, indeed, 
 thought of, and spoken of, lightly, by the bulk 
 of mankind : but this is no proof that they who 
 do so are superior to it, or that they resist it. * 
 Many strong men, — yea, many mighty men — 
 have fallen by it. Men! yea, angels, have 
 been overthrown by it in the very heaven of hea- 
 vens. Even their immortal powers and celestial 
 advantages were not a sufficient balance to the 
 weight of temptation. Like a serpent, it wound 
 itself around the pillars of their thrones of light, 
 
FIERY DARTS OF SATAN. 141 
 
 coiled its folds upon their harps of gold, crept 
 into their bosom ; and having thus drawn aside 
 a third part of the stars of heaven, it hurled 
 them, at one sweep, into " the blackness of dark- 
 ness for ever." The man, therefore, who thinks 
 so lightly of temptation as not to be afraid of it, 
 ought to place himself, in idea, amongst these 
 once " morning stars," whilst they shone around 
 the eternal throne as emanations of the Father 
 of lights, and served him day and night without 
 weariness: and whilst witnessing them singing 
 and shining in their bright orbits, and all linked 
 unto God as if they had been rays of his glory ; 
 he would then see and feel what strength, what 
 motives, what innocence, temptation could over- 
 match and overwhelm. And then, let him look 
 to the dark and desolate orbits of those fallen 
 morning stars ; to their present chains of dark- 
 ness, and to their future prospects ; — and if, after 
 this survey of heaven and hell, he is still not afraid 
 of temptation, he must surely suspect that he is 
 less than a man, or fancy himself to be more than 
 an angel. 
 
 All this, however, although the strongest, is 
 not the most affecting, light in which to view 
 
142 THE TEMPTATIONS AND 
 
 our own clanger from temptation. Which of 
 the mightiest human names has not temptation 
 left a stain and a stigma upon ? Noah ? — Ah, 
 you recollect his wine. Abraham ? — His equi- 
 vocation. Moses ? — His impatience. Aaron ? 
 — His unbelief. Jacob? — His stratagem. The 
 Patriarchs.? — Their treatment of Joseph. Eli- 
 jah?— His murmuring. David ?_His fall. Heze- 
 kiah?— His ostentation. Jonah ?_His rebellion. 
 Peter? — His denial of Christ. And if these 
 mighty men fell, let him that standeth take heed 
 lest he fall also. Let not him that putteth on the 
 harness, boast himself as he who putteth it off. 
 We shall not be fully beyond the reach of all 
 danger, until we are fairly through the valley 
 of the shadow of death ; for even in it, the 
 fiery darts of Satan sometimes fly thick and flash 
 dreadfully. Only when we are "clean over" the 
 swellings of Jordan, will there be *' nothing" in 
 us for Satan to work upon. 
 
 Were, indeed, simplicity of heart, and gra- 
 cious principles, preventatives, or absolute safe- 
 guards, against all temptations, some might es- 
 cape ; but even innocence^ in Eden, was not an 
 eff"ectual shield against the fiery darts of Satan. 
 
FIERY DARTS OF SATAN. 143 
 
 Innocence ! even incarnate divinity^ was not 
 exempt from assault, though superior to seduc- 
 tion ; for the Saviour was assailed and harassed 
 by Satan, until his human nature required angels 
 to minister unto its exhausted strength. 
 
 Some who readily subscribe to the truth of all 
 this, do it for a bad purpose, and argue thus : 
 — " Jf such men fell, we cannot be expected to 
 stand always, nor to exceed them in resisting the 
 devil." But this is mere sophistry and self- 
 deception ; for those who fell, fell by no neces- 
 sity but what they themselves created. Satan 
 has power to say, "Cast thyself down !" but he 
 has not power to throw down any one who is 
 doing "all to stand." Had Noah been as watch- 
 ful after planting a vineyard, as before, he would 
 not have fallen by wine. Had David made and 
 kept such "a covenant with his eyes" as Job 
 did, he would not have coveted his " neighbour's 
 wife." Had Peter confined himself to the com- 
 pany of his fellow-disciples, he would not have 
 been in the same danger of denying his Master 
 with oaths, as when he mingled with the ene- 
 mies of Christ, Besides, one chief cause of the 
 fall of these, otherwise, good men, was, that 
 
144 THE TEMPTATIONS AND 
 
 they evidently never allowed themselves to sus- 
 pect that they were in danger of falling by such 
 temptations. It is highly probable, that had any 
 one warned them against the sins which over- 
 came them, each of them would have said, " Is 
 thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing ?" 
 Thus, there are two things necessary, in order 
 to resist temptation successfully ; — doing all to 
 stand, and being afraid of falling ; for if we are 
 not afraid of falling, we shall not take unto our- 
 selves " the whole armour of God," that we may 
 be "able to stand." 
 
 Amongst those temptations of Satan to which 
 we are chiefly exposed, and which are emphati- 
 cally his, "fiery darts," one is, the temptation to 
 Atheism or Infidelity. Now, whenever the 
 horrid suspicion that there is *' no God," or that 
 the Bible is not to be depended on, comes in 
 like a flood upon the mind, it is a fiery dart of 
 Satan ; and he alone has the guilt of it, whilst 
 the mind hates or deplores it. Unless, indeed, 
 we have been exposing ourselves by reading 
 sceptical boo.ks, and listening to scorners ; then, 
 the guilt of infidel thoughts is chiefly our own. 
 But when they are thrown into the soul unsought 
 
FIERY DARTS OF SATAN. 145 
 
 and unawares, and thrown after the soul when 
 it is retreating from them, — the archer^ and not 
 the " wounded spirit," is the criminal, in that 
 case. We are personally accountable only for 
 those temptations which we court, connive at, or 
 yield to. The Saviour was tempted of the devil 
 to impatience, presumption, and idolatry ; ])ut 
 as he had not exposed himself to these fiery 
 darts, and did not yield to them, but repelled 
 them, he was nowise accountable for them. 
 
 This distinction is strongly stated ; but it is 
 wanted, in all its strength, when the mind is 
 overwhelmed by distracting doubts of the being 
 of God or the truth of revelation. In that case, 
 it seems to ourselves improbable, if not impos- 
 sible, that we had ever believed *' with the 
 heart;" seeing, that now, we are almost ready 
 to give up faith in God, and to regard all things 
 as a chaos of mere chance ! We argue thus : 
 ** Surely, if I had been taught by the Spirit of 
 God, and at all renewed in the spirit of ray own 
 mind, I should be incapable of harbouring or 
 starting such atheistical thoughts. They would 
 not surely come into ' a new heart.' Are they 
 not symptoms of a reprobate mind ?" This 
 o 
 
146 THE TEMPTATIONS AND 
 
 however, is a mistake; they are «' the fiery darts" 
 of Satan, and not the real sentiments of our own 
 minds. Accordingly, we do not think these doubts 
 well-founded. We do not wish them to be true. 
 Nothing would pain us so much as finding that 
 there was no God, or no Bible, or no hereafter ! 
 However much, therefore, we may be harassed 
 by these dark suspicions, they are not our sin, 
 but our misfortune, so long as we shrink from 
 them, and try to shake them off. At the same 
 time, we are not altogether blameless in this mat- 
 ter ; for, had we acquainted and familiarized our- 
 selves more fully with the Evidences of natural 
 and revealed religion, Satan would not have found 
 it so easy to unsettle our thoughts. Hence the im- 
 portance of preventing the return of this tempta- 
 tion, by acquiring a more full and connected view 
 of the grounds of faith. 
 
 Another '« fiery dart" of Satan's is, the tempta- 
 tion to Blasphemy. Now, although every thing 
 is not blasphemy, which is called so by custom, 
 we are not wrong in regarding, as blasphemous, 
 all those thoughts which impeach the character or 
 the government of God. There are things in both 
 which clash with our natural ideas of propriety ; 
 
FIERY DARTS OF SATAN. 147 
 
 and, when they clash with our inclinations too, 
 Satan can so magnify what we dislike in the 
 Divine character and government, that we are in 
 great danger of thinking and speaking against 
 God. " I do well to be angry," said Jonah, 
 when God caused his gourd to wither. " Verily 
 I have cleansed my heart in vain," said Asaph, 
 wheii he saw that the ** ungodly" prospered in 
 the world, and that he himself was " chastened 
 every morning." Now all these things happen 
 still, and Satan turns them into strong tempta- 
 tions when they happen to ourselves. The gourds 
 of our shelter and solace wither sometimes in a 
 night, and we are left exposed and lonely, whilst 
 the gourds of the ungodly are almost evergreens : 
 or our plans and undertakings are unsuccessful, 
 whilst those who have no fear of God before their 
 eyes, seem to have every thing their own way, 
 and sometimes more than heart could wish. Thus, 
 between the apparent inequalities of Providence 
 and our own actual sufferings, we are tempted to 
 murmur, and, at times almost to arraign the jus- 
 tice of God. Indeed, there are moments of such 
 agitation, when Satan aggravates these calamities, 
 that the heart seems to harden under them, and 
 
148 THE TEMPTATIONS AND 
 
 the soul to become reckless of consequences. 
 Who has not felt that fiery dart flash across a 
 wounded spirit — «' Let God do his worst, for I 
 cannot be more miserable than I am already ?** 
 These are awful moments, when the soul is al- 
 most ready to take its swing amongst all the risks 
 of time and eternity, and, like the " unjust judge," 
 to give up both the fear of God and regard for 
 man ! Oh ! it is well that, when Satan comes in 
 such ** great wrath," his time is short: and it is 
 better^ that the good Shepherd holds his tempted 
 and terrified sheep so, that the roaring lion can- 
 not devour them, nor pluck them out of their 
 Shepherd's hand. 
 
 At such moments, indeed, we hardly venture 
 to regard ourselves as the sheep of Christ : we 
 seem to ourselves goats, going to his *' left hand," 
 of our own accord, and " before our time." Ac- 
 cordingly, it is not until we come to our " right 
 mind" again, that we can even join his flock in 
 the green pastures of Zion. " But," it may be 
 said, ** can any sheep or lamb of the Saviour's 
 flock sink into such reckless desperation even for 
 * a moment V^ Perhaps, not sink into it; but they 
 may be goaded into it by the fiery darts of Satan. 
 
FIERY DARTS OF SATAN. 149 
 
 Indeed, when the character of God comes to be 
 judged of by his trying dispensations, instead of 
 his dispensations being judged of by his character, 
 Satan finds that, in the heart, to work upon, which 
 can soon wind it up to desperation. Those who 
 have never seen nriuch of real life, or never looked 
 at it closely, may be astonished at this. It is, 
 however, only too true : and hence the necessity 
 of a settled conviction in our minds, that God 
 must not be judged of by our trials. Job saw 
 and felt this, when he said, " Though he slay 
 me, yet will I trust in him." And we have al- 
 ways reason to do so, whatever be our calamities; 
 for, even when he chastises in anger, the anger 
 is not mixed with hatred, but with love. When- 
 ever, therefore, Satan suggests, from our afflic- 
 tions, any reflection or charge against the Divine 
 character, we ought immediately to shut our hearts 
 against it ; and, as those who are conscious of lov- 
 ing God, to answer, *' Get thee behind me, Sa- 
 tan; for all thinsfs work together for good to them 
 
 ' o o o 
 
 that love God !" 
 
 It is not, however, in times of calamity only, 
 that Satan hurls his fiery darts against the soul. 
 The temptation to find fault with the Sove- 
 o 2 
 
150 THE TEMPTATIONS AND 
 
 REIGNTY of Grace, is often greatest when Pro- 
 vidence is most smiling ; at least, when it is not 
 adverse. Satan seems, then, to envy the pleasure 
 which the fearers of God find in the ways of God; 
 and, as he cannot forge fiery darts out of their lot 
 then, he often draws them from the decrees of God. 
 How far we ourselves are naturally prone to pry 
 into " secret things," and to tamper with the 
 abstract question of personal election, I do not 
 stop to inquire now. One thing is certain, that, 
 whether prone or averse, almost all serious minds 
 get entangled more or less with the question at 
 times. Who has not felt his thoughts drawn into 
 some such track as the following : — " True ; I 
 am now more reconciled to the salvation and ser- 
 vice of God than I once was ; I am even willing 
 to walk in the narrow way which leadeth unto 
 life ; — but eternal life ' is not of him that willeth, 
 nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth 
 mercy; and He will have mercy only upon whom 
 he will have mercy.' If, therefore, I am not 
 elected — neither my willing nor my running can 
 avail me. I may be lost at last, whatever I do ! 
 Oh ! why is sovereignty the rule of mercy ?" 
 Whenever Satan can get the soul this length 
 
FIERY DARTS OF SATAN. 151 
 
 in questioning or suspecting the good will of God, 
 he soon entangles it in a labyrinth of rash or dark 
 speculations which harden or horrify the mind. 
 I state this in general terms, because it would be 
 improper to embody, in express words, all the 
 dreadful surmises and charges against God, which 
 rise up in the mind at such times. Those who 
 have felt them need no remembrancer, and those 
 who are strangers to them cannot be too long ig- 
 norant of them. When, however, the question 
 of personal election is borne in, and bound upon, 
 the soul like a heavy chain, which checks and 
 weighs down hope ; and when " the iron enters 
 into the soul," so that it knows not what to do 
 or what to think; — the best thing which can be 
 done in such a case is, to ask the simple ques- 
 tion, " Has ever any one found out his own elec- 
 tion by brooding over the matter as I am doing ? 
 Many have acquired a cheering persuasion that 
 their names were ' written in the Lamb's book of 
 life :' did they obtain the hope of this by such a 
 process as I am pursuing ? I am afraid to pray, 
 and have no heart to use the ordinary means of 
 grace ; because I am not sure what will be the 
 issue. Was this Paul's plan } Was this the line 
 of conduct v^hich the apostles pointed out to in- 
 
152 THE TEMPTATIONS AND 
 
 quirers ? No !— It cannot, therefore, lead me to 
 the point I wish to reach. I have, indeed, instead 
 of trying to enter into * the secret of the Lord' by 
 the ' door,' been trying to « climb up some other 
 way.' This is wrong !" 
 
 Are you, then, persuaded that it is wrong ? 
 Well; consider again, that none of all whom you 
 have known to die in the Lord, or know to be 
 the Lord's, had any knowledge of their own elec- 
 tion when they first fled to Christ, and began to 
 follow him. Whatever they know now, they 
 were, for a time, as ignorant on this point as you 
 can be ; and whatever they have found out, was 
 discovered in the path of duty, and nowise apart 
 from the use of the scriptures. Ask them — and 
 they will tell you so. Do you, then, really ima- 
 gine that it is necessary, or that it would be wise, 
 to reveal to you a matter which, for a time is kept 
 hid from all the heirs of salvation ? Must God, 
 to humour your curiosity, alter his plan of acting 
 under the gospel ? The old and usual plan has 
 done well enough for millions and myriads who 
 had both more to do and to suffer than you have. 
 I do not underrate your trials nor your perplexi- 
 ties ; but I must remind you that better soldiers 
 have had to fight and die upon the bare ground 
 
FIERY DARTS OF SATAN. 153 
 
 of hope ; so that, if you will not begin the spi- 
 ritual warfare without assurance, you will never 
 begin it at all. 
 
 Besides ; do consider that, if you had the as- 
 surance of your own personal election, it would 
 not alter the path of duty in the least. It would 
 unbind nothing that is binding on christians. It 
 would not prevent trials, nor exempt you from 
 temptations. It would, indeed, I grant, cheer 
 you in the path of duty and suffering, to know 
 that you were chosen and called to eternal life ; 
 and thus, although not absolutely necessary to 
 your success, it is certainly desirable for your 
 comfort. I will even go farther, and affirm, (for 
 the word of God bears me out in doing so] that 
 you will do and suffer the will of God better 
 when you know your election of God. But, if 
 you really want to know it for holy purposes, it 
 is not such a secret as you have hitherto imagined, 
 nor as you were sure to find it, from the way you 
 took to discover it. 
 
 In fact, it is not a secret at all, so far as it re- 
 gards those who have fled to Christ for a holy 
 salvation : they are the elect of God. All that 
 '* love God" are " the called according to his 
 purpose." This is expressly revealed, for their 
 
154 THE TEMPTATIONS, &C. 
 
 satisfaction on the point. If, therefore, it be a 
 secret to you, it is so, either because you have 
 not observed this simple fact, or because you still 
 doubt the sincerity of your own faith and love. 
 The scriptural fact, however, is now before you ; 
 — all true believers are the elect of God ; and, 
 therefore, whatever reason you have to regard 
 yourself as a believer, is proof of your personal 
 election. You have no occasion to perplex your- 
 self with the abstract question, if you are con- 
 scious of loving God and the Lamb ; for love to 
 them settles the whole question in your case, and 
 in all cases where love is genuine. What you 
 have to do, therefore, is simply to ascertain the 
 sincerity of your faith and love ; and that may 
 be soon done, if you take care to distinguish be- 
 tween weakness and insincerity, and between im- 
 perfection and pretence. Now, you know that 
 your avowals of faith and love at the mercy-seat, 
 and your desires for their increase, are not pre- 
 tences, but the unfeigned language of your heart, 
 addressed to the Searcher of hearts. Well ; his 
 language to you is express, — " I have loved thee 
 with an everlasting love, therefore with loving- 
 kindness have I drawn thee,'^ And let this be your 
 answer to all the counter-suggestions of Satan. 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 No. X. 
 
 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FEELING AND 
 ENJOYMENT. 
 
 There are few things more distressing or dis- 
 couraging to a serious mind, than the unsteadi- 
 ness of its own feelings. These change so often 
 and so much, that we hardly know what to think 
 of ourselves at times. We wish to be feelingly 
 alive to the glories of the Saviour and salvation 
 — to the solemnities of death and eternity — and 
 to the claims of duty and devotion ; but, some- 
 how, the impression of these great realities is not 
 abiding. — It seems often ** ready to vanish away" 
 from our minds. And yet, at times, the impres- 
 sion of eternal things is very deep. Occasionally, 
 it seizes upon, and sinks into, the heart so fully, 
 that we could not throw it off if we would ; and 
 
156 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF 
 
 yet it soon passes off, even against our will . We 
 do not intend to forget divine things, nor to be- 
 come formal in religious duties; but, alas ! we often 
 do both, and find ourselves almost estranged from 
 God and godliness ; so treacherous and changea- 
 ble is the human mind, even after it has felt much 
 of the power of truth and eternity ! 
 
 This melancholy fact naturally gives rise to a 
 suspicion in our own breasts, that, whatever we 
 have experienced, we are not yet truly converted 
 to God ; for it seems impossible to reconcile these 
 sad changes of feeling with the possession of "the 
 root of the matter." All our ordinary ideas of "a 
 new heart and a right spirit," include the neces- 
 sity of more habitual steadiness of purpose and 
 strength of spiritual feeling. Accordingly, our 
 relapses into deadness and formality induce a 
 doubt, if not of our sincerity, of our conversion ; 
 and thus all our pleasing hopes, which were drawn 
 from the consciousness of relying on Christ for a 
 holy salvation, are almost upset, at times. They 
 seem unwarranted in our case, because our feel- 
 ings are inconsistent with them, and with all our 
 ideas of the saving work of the Holy Spirit upon 
 the heart. The consequence is, — we are often 
 
RELIGIOUS FEELING AND ENJOYMENT. 157 
 
 ready to conclude that we are too hasty in taking 
 up the hope of salvation, and in giving ourselves 
 credit for being converted characters. We are 
 almost persuaded, at times, that it would have 
 been better to have waited longer, before ven- 
 turing to avow our religious feehngs to the world 
 or to the church. We may not exactly repent of 
 having said that we were in good earnest about 
 the salvation of our souls ; but we have wished 
 that we had said less, and thought more, on the 
 subject. 
 
 In this painful dilemma many find themselves, 
 and hardly know what to do or think in their 
 own case. The sad unsteadiness of their reli- 
 gious feelings and resolutions keeps some back 
 from the sacrament, and almost forces others 
 away from it. One class are afraid to come, 
 and another equally afraid to continue. The 
 former are not easy in their absence from it, 
 nor the latter easy in their attendance on it ; and 
 both, whilst in this unhappy state of mind, de- 
 rive but little benefit from the other ordinances 
 of grace. 
 
 Such being the fact of this case, it is of im- 
 mense importance to both classes, that the subject 
 p 
 
158 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF 
 
 of Fluctuating Religious Feelings should be cleared 
 up to them without reserve or delay. It is, how- 
 ever, a subject equally delicate and difficult; for 
 any view of it which would lead the serious to 
 think lightly of the evil of dead or cold frames of 
 mind, would do far more injury than these frames 
 themselves. For, bad as they are in themselves, 
 and in their influence upon christian character, 
 they are not so baneful as a heedless disregard to 
 the state of the heart. He who trembles at the 
 treachery of his own heart, is humbled, as well as 
 hindered, by it ; whereas he who is reconciled to 
 a vacant mind and a worldly spirit, and thus reck- 
 less how he feels, is sure to make shipwreck of 
 faith and of a good conscience. The mourner 
 over the plagues of his own heart will, at least, 
 not increase them ; but the man who regards them 
 as mere matters of course, and thus allows them 
 to take their swing, will soon bring them out from 
 the centre of his heart to the surface of his life. 
 
 Such being my own personal convictions, and, 
 as far as I can ascertain it, the actual result of ge- 
 neral experience on this subject, I am not likely 
 to lessen either your fear or hatred of those melan- 
 choly changes of feeling which now pain and per- 
 
RELIGIOUS FEELING AND ENJOYMENT. 159 
 
 plex you. I cannot, indeed, ^in with you in 
 regarding them as utterly incompatible or incon- 
 sistent with the existence of saving faith in the 
 heart ; but I am fully prepared to regard them, 
 in reference to the spiritual health of the soul, as 
 indicating, what similar bodily symptoms imply, 
 the presence of disease. Now, all is not right, 
 but much wrong, with the body, when there is a 
 frequent loss of appetite, or a loathing of natu- 
 ral food, or a disposition to lethargy. In each of 
 these cases there is abundant reason for fear and 
 care. Accordingly, we are both fearful and care- 
 ful, when such symptoms show themselves. But, 
 even when they are most alarming, we never ima- 
 gine that they disprove the former existence of life 
 or health. Such an idea is too absurd to be ad- 
 mitted for a moment. Well; in like manner, the 
 loss of spiritual appetite and relish does not prove 
 that we never had any. In fact, it just proves the 
 contrary : for as we know, from having enjoyed 
 bodily health, that there is a change for the worse 
 when appetite fails ; so the felt and deplored loss 
 of relish for divine things, proves that they were 
 once enjoyed by the soul. Hence Job's piercing 
 lamentation, ** Oh, that it were with me as in 
 
160 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF 
 
 months past/'' is as much proof that "the candle 
 of the Lord" had shone upon him, as that it was 
 then eclipsed. 
 
 Parallels between natural and spiritual life and 
 health are, I am fully aware, hazardous grounds 
 of argument, when the object is to ascertain a 
 point so solemn as the conversion of the soul to 
 God; for almost any bodily action or emotion 
 proves the existence of natural life to a certainty ; 
 whereas there may be many moral feelings, which, 
 although they resemble spiritual feelings in some 
 things, do not amount to spiritual life. There 
 are, perhaps, very few persons amongst those who 
 have sat under a faithful ministry of the Gospel, 
 who have not felt both alarmed and allured, at 
 times, by the appeals of the pulpit. It is not 
 even uncommon to find persons completely en- 
 raptured, for some months or weeks, with a mi- 
 nistry which is full of Christ and grace, and so 
 spiritual withal, that it seems impossible to love 
 it, without loving the Saviour at the same time. 
 But all this, we know, may be done without even 
 leading to secret prayer. In like manner, it is 
 quite possible to take a very lively interest in re- 
 ligious duties, and to be much pleased, for a con- 
 
RELIGIOUS FEELING AND ENJOYMENT. 161 
 
 siderable time, with prayer-meetings and spiritual 
 conversation ; and yet to remain unregenerate all 
 the time. This is often proved, by the return of 
 such persons to their old habits of indifference 
 and neglect. But here is the difference between 
 them and the truly serious : — the former are not 
 sorry to give up their new habits, nor unwilling 
 to return to their old ways ; but rather glad, than 
 otherwise, to rid themselves of religious restraints: 
 whereas the latter cannot bear the idea of going 
 back to the world, nor feel easy when their hearts 
 are becoming worldly. There may be sad changes 
 for the worse, in the state of their feelings ; but 
 these make their heart sad, and humble them be- 
 fore God. They count it no gain, but a heavy, 
 heavy loss, to get free from the holy influence of 
 any religious principle or motive. It is no plea- 
 sure to them, but an acute pain, to feel that either 
 the Gospel or the Law is losing any of its autho- 
 rity over thera. In a word, it is their chief bur- 
 den and terror to feel less affected by divine things 
 than at first. 
 
 Now when this is the real state of the case, and 
 when, in connection with this sense of loss and 
 sin, there is a deep desire to return to the love 
 p 2 
 
162 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF 
 
 and liveliness of former days, the changes do not 
 disprove the reality of the faith or conversion of 
 such mourners in Zion. Lukewarm n ess and the 
 loss of relish in the service of God and the Lamb, 
 prove, indeed, much against such mourners ; but 
 they do not prove them to be Unbelievers, far less 
 hypocrites. Bad frames of mind demonstrate that 
 there has been some bad habit or temper indulged, 
 or not sufficiently watched against ; and that there 
 has been some want of prayer or prudence, and 
 some yielding to sloth, or tampering with temp- 
 tation ; and any of these causes of heartlessness 
 are reasons for deep shame and humiliation, but 
 not for despair. Despair can only make all that 
 is bad worse, and all that is discouraging despe- 
 rate ; because its direct tendency is to harden the 
 heart. 
 
 But whilst it is true that bad frames of spirit 
 are never wholly unconnected with remissness of 
 some kind, it is equally true that both they and 
 their practical causes are connected with some 
 misapprehension of the Gospel itself. There has 
 been something doctrinal forgotten, or mistaken, 
 or overlooked, as well as something practical neg- 
 lected, whenever lukewarmness or disrelish takes 
 
RELIGIOUS FEELING AND ENJOYMENT. 163 
 
 possession of the heart. Either the object, of faith, 
 or the law of faith, is in some degree lost sight of 
 or misunderstood, when the followers of the Lamb 
 are heartless and formal. This is self-evident ; be- 
 cause it is impossible for any man to believe that 
 he himself is redeemed by the blood of Christ, 
 and thus made a child of God, and yet remain 
 unjeeling towards God and the Lamb. Accord- 
 ingly, so long as we venture to cherish the fond 
 hope that we are " accepted in the Beloved," we 
 are not unfeeling in heart, nor formal in obedi- 
 ence. It is when we forget or doubt that we are 
 •'justified by faith," that we cease to have " peace 
 with God," and sink into heartlessness in his ser- 
 vice ; and, therefore, the grand evangelical fact, 
 that his " righteousness is upon all that believe," 
 should never be forgotten or doubted by any one 
 who is relying on Christ for a holy salvation. It 
 is the duty as well as the privilege, of all who 
 have committed their souls to Christ, to believe 
 that they are justified by believing on Him ; be- 
 cause, in no other way can they ever obtain the 
 joy of salvation. In fact, there is no other way ; 
 for, whatever the Holy Spirit does in producing 
 that joy, he does it by opening up this revealed 
 
164 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF 
 
 truth to the mind, and enabling the soul to be- 
 lieve it on its own behalf. And this belief, al- 
 though not essential to acceptance with God, is 
 essential to " peace with God," and to the main- 
 tenance of a feeling heart in his service ; for no 
 one can feel aright in all things, who does not 
 believe aright in all those things which " belong 
 to our peace." 
 
 If, therefore, you never understood clearly this 
 part of the Gospel, nor saw, in the hand-writing 
 of God, your own warrant to regard yourself as 
 a child of God, it is no wonder that your best 
 frames and feelings have not been lasting. How 
 could they last under the weakening and wasting 
 influence of suspense ? What was there to main- 
 tain them in lively exercise, whilst you could not 
 lay your hand upon the written promise of your 
 own salvation ? Seeing the possibility of being 
 saved, is, indeed, " a great sight," which may 
 well awaken whole trains of sweet and solemn 
 feelings in the bosom of a trembling sinner ; but 
 these cannot last long in their sweetness^ unless 
 he see too the probability of being saved. Even 
 the desire of salvation, which is, perhaps, the most 
 powerful feeling of a serious mind, must lose much 
 
RELIGIOUS FEELING AND ENJOYMENT. 165 
 
 of its power, if it can lay hold on nothing: stronger 
 than a " perad venture" to gratify it. The soul 
 craves for more — the conscience needs more than 
 a may-be to satisfy them. Accordingly, if they 
 are not satisfied, they soon fall asleep again, or 
 return to their old portion. 
 
 Here, then, is one great cause of the decline 
 of rpiritual relish ; — the spiritual appetite, when 
 hungering and thirsting for salvation, is not taken 
 direct to the Gospel for satisfaction, but tantalized 
 by mere peradventures. Indeed, even prayer it- 
 self fails to keep up a happy frame of mind, when 
 the mind has nothing else to look to but the bare 
 probability of an eventual answer. Accordingly, 
 if you have been doing nothing more than pray- 
 ing for salvation, it is really no wonder that your 
 enjoyment has been both small and unsteady. Not, 
 indeed, that you have prayed too much ; that is 
 impossible ; but because you have believed too 
 little. God answers prayer by blessing his own 
 Word to the soul ; and therefore it is as neces- 
 sary to " search the Scriptures," as it is to cry 
 for mercy. But if, instead of combining with 
 prayer the study of the Gospel, that you might 
 thus understand the salvation you have been 
 
166 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF 
 
 seeking, you have gone on expecting that the 
 pardon, and peace, and joy which you wanted, 
 would be infused, in some mysterious way, into 
 your heart, — your disappointment is a matter of 
 course ; for you did not take God's plan of suc- 
 ceeding ; and the consequence is — the darkness 
 and deadness which you complain of. In fact, 
 confining the pursuit of salvation to prayer alone, 
 is almost enough to bring prayer itself to a speedy 
 and final end; for no man will persist long in fer- 
 vent prayer, if, after many strong cries and tears, 
 he find himself as far off as ever from hope and 
 peace. He may not throw off the habit of it ; but 
 it will gradually fall off, if he gain nothing by it. 
 Nor is this all the bad effect of disuniting faith 
 from prayer ; the man who, after much prayer for 
 pardon and peace, finds no sense, no symptom, 
 of either in his mind, is strongly tempted to aban- 
 don the pursuit as hopeless, and to suspect that 
 God has singled him out as an exception to the 
 rule, that " whosoever shall call on the name of 
 the Lord shall be saved." And when this dark 
 suspicion sets in upon his mind, it soon gives 
 birth to still darker thoughts and feelings. And 
 even when disappointment does not occasion such 
 
RELIGIOUS FEELING AND ENJOYMENT. 167 
 
 horrid suspicions, it wears out the spirit of prayer, 
 and weighs down all the best feelings of the heart. 
 The sad reflection, " I obtain no answers to my 
 prayers, and find no enjoyment in them now !" 
 almost cuts the cords which first bound the soul 
 to " the horns of the altar." And when such, or 
 indeed any considerations alienate the soul from 
 secret devotion, they soon alter all its gracious 
 feelings and habits. 
 
 Now it is thus, chiefly, that matters go wrong 
 in the heart of the serious ; they miss enjoyment 
 by overlooking part of the Gospel, and thus lose 
 much of their first love and liveliness. Other 
 oversights concur, indeed, with this one, in pro- 
 ducing and prolonging a low state of piety in the 
 soul ; and nothing can restore the soul to spiri- 
 tual health, which does not correct these practi- 
 cal oversights, and lead to watchfulness and dili- 
 gence. Nothing, however, can restore the soul to 
 the joy of salvation, or to the power of godhness, 
 but the Holy Spirit, by leading you *' into all 
 truth;" for, until you have a personal hold upon 
 the great salvation, it cannot have a permanent 
 influence upon your heart. Now, such a hold of 
 it you have either not obtained, or you have lost 
 
168 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF 
 
 it ; and, whichever be the case, there is only one 
 way of obtaining it, — namely, by the belief of 2i\\ 
 the truth. Watchfulness, without believing, will 
 not make the heart happy, nor " right with God :" 
 prayer, without believing, will not restore the joy 
 of salvation. They may produce a state of mind 
 and character, so devout, and humble, and up- 
 right, that, by reasoning from effects to causes^ 
 you may venture to conclude that your salvation 
 is begun, and thus get hold of it by inference. It 
 was thus, most likely, that you acquired your first 
 hope and joy of salvation, the loss of which you 
 now deplore. You then felt as you had never 
 done before, and found such a change of heart 
 and habits taking place in you, and were con- 
 scious of such a willingness to be indebted and 
 devoted to the Saviour, — that you could hardly 
 doubt the reality of your conversion. Accord- 
 ingly, from thus seeing and feeling the work of 
 the Spirit within you, you ventured to conclude 
 that the work of Christ was for you. Because 
 you thought that the Holy Spirit had *' quick- 
 ened" you, you hoped that the Saviour had "died 
 for" you; and because certain marks of effectual 
 calling were showing themselves in your heart and 
 
RELIGIOUS FEELING AND ENJOYMENT. 169 
 
 life, you ventured to regard them as some evi- 
 dence of being '* called according to the pur- 
 pose" of God. 
 
 It was, perhaps, somewhat in this way, that 
 you obtained whatever hold of salvation you got 
 for yourself at first ; and, could you see all those 
 marks of grace about yourself again, you would 
 feel warranted and encouraged to take down your 
 harp from the willows, and sing again the New 
 Song : but as some of these marks are almost 
 gone, and all of them more or less decayed, you 
 dare not sing as in the days of old, nor even hope 
 as formerly. But now, if this really be a true 
 copy of your past and present views and feelings, 
 does it not occur to you, on looking at the copy, 
 that you have, all along, had but confused ideas 
 of the Gospel ? You seem, indeed, to have be- 
 lieved it cordially as far as you understood it ; but 
 it does not seem that you 3ver studied it half so 
 much as you did the frames of your own mind. 
 You must have looked chiefly into, and at, your- 
 self for a warrant to hope in Christ. Do consider 
 this fact. According to your own account of the 
 matter, you have, since you began to think se- 
 riously, been much in the habit of marking the 
 Q 
 
170 THE FLUCTUATIONS OF 
 
 workings of your own mind, and the meltings of 
 your heart ; and when you found them of a holy 
 and humble character, you began to think that 
 you were then warranted, and almost welcome, 
 to hope in Christ for your own salvation; but, 
 now that you feel less spiritual and contrite, you 
 are afraid to hope. 
 
 Now really, if this be the real state of the case 
 with you, you have misunderstood the Gospel 
 more than I have hitherto supposed you to have 
 done. For do you not see, that, in all your rea- 
 sonings from effects to causes, your own feelings, 
 and not God's invitations, have been made your 
 chief warrant for hoping in Christ. This is self- 
 evident, seeing that, now your tenderness of feel- 
 ing is gone, you are afraid to hope; — a plain proof 
 that you have studied your own heart far more than 
 the word of God. What He says concerning the 
 ground and warrant of hope, has had less of your 
 attention than what you felt towards religion in 
 general. Now, although you did not, and, in- 
 deed, could not, feel too much, you have made a 
 wrong use of your best feelings, in thus making 
 them your chief encouragement in hoping for sal- 
 vation ; for, they are no part of the ground of hope, 
 
RELIGIOUS FEELING AND ENJOYMEJNT. 171 
 
 nor, in themselves, of its warrant. " Behold 
 the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of 
 the world,'' ^ is both the only ground and warrant 
 of hope which the scriptures contain. Nor is 
 any thing more necessary ; for as the blood of the 
 Lamb answers all the demands of the law, so the 
 word of the Lamb warrants all who are looking 
 to Him alone for acceptance with God, to believe 
 that they are accepted. This is the Gospel ! " He 
 that believeth, is justified from all things." *« He 
 that believeth hath eternal life." If, therefore, 
 you are conscious that, notwithstanding all your 
 mistakes and relapses, your real design was and 
 is to rely upon Christ alone, that you might be- 
 come like Christ ; you too are warranted, by the 
 direct authority of God, to believe that you are a 
 partaker of that salvation which you were, just 
 now, afraid to hope for. And if you are aston- 
 ished to find the matter brought to this much- 
 desired, but unexpected issue, do remember that 
 it is only saying, in other words, that eternal life 
 is '« the free gift of God" to them who believe in 
 Christ. Consider these things, and they will soon 
 restore all your best feelings, and place them upon 
 a firmer basis than ever they stood on before. 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 No. XL 
 THE CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 
 
 One great cause of backsliding is the uncer^ 
 tainty which many of the serious allow to rest 
 upon the question of their own faith in Christ. 
 They never were sure that they were believers. 
 They wished to be so — tried to be so — and hoped 
 that, eventually, they should prove to be so. 
 This may be your case. You were quite sure, 
 when you began to follow Christ, that a great 
 change had taken place in your heart and habits, 
 and in your views and feelings ; — so great, that 
 you could not but regard it, then, as the begin- 
 ning of that *' good work" which God has pro- 
 mised to carry on. Accordingly, under this sweet 
 persuasion, you began to act as a believer, and to 
 apply to yourself ail the commands which are en- 
 joined upon believers. Thus, in reference to duty. 
 
CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 173 
 
 you cast in your lot with the people of God, and 
 willingly came under all their peculiar obligations ; 
 and the readiness with which you did so, at that 
 time, was no small proof to yourself, and others, 
 that you were the subject of a divine change. You 
 were even glad to find that you were no longer 
 unwilling to follow holiness, nor averse to devo- 
 tion. You wondered and wept that you had ever 
 neglected them — and adored the grace which had 
 put an end to that criminal negligence. Accord- 
 ingly you often felt sure that you could never re- 
 lapse into your old state of mind ; the bare idea 
 of going back from the ** narrow way" into the 
 " broad way" again, was abhorrent to you. You 
 could not believe that it was possible, after all 
 that you had seen and felt, to forsake the fountain 
 of living waters, and return to the broken cisterns 
 of sin or folly. But you have done so, and left 
 both your " first love," and your " first works." 
 You are now a backslider, and feel and confess 
 that you are so. 
 
 Many causes, of course, concurred in producing 
 
 this backsliding ; and all the moral causes of it 
 
 are well known to yourself. You can see, at a 
 
 glance, how it began in the neglect of secret 
 
 Q 2 
 
174 CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 
 
 prayer; and how it went on by the neglect of 
 self-examination ; and how it settled into a kind 
 of apostacy of heart frona God and godliness, by 
 an undue attention to the world, or by tampering 
 with forbidden things. Your heart condemns you 
 — and " God is greater than your heart, and know- 
 eth all things/'' The case, however, although both 
 lamentable and criminal, is not hopeless. You 
 have, indeed, almost given up God ; but God has 
 not given up you ; so that there is still hope in 
 Israel concerning this thing! For it is just as 
 true that God ** heals backslidings," as that he 
 pardons sins ; — just as true that the backslider is 
 welcome to return to Christ, as that any sinner is 
 welcome to come to him. He who restored Peter 
 will not reject you, when you seek him with all 
 your heart. The Saviour is, in fact, more un- 
 willing to give you up finally, than you are to be 
 given up by him. 
 
 Such being the real state of the case, the first 
 question is, of course. How must you return r 
 Now there is not one way for unbelievers to 
 come to God, and another for backsliders to 
 return to God ; but the way in which you came, 
 is the only way in which you can return. Both 
 
CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 175 
 
 unbelievers and backsliders have *' access to God," 
 only ** by the biood of Christ ;" but in that way, 
 whosoever cometh, or returneth, he will in no wise 
 cast out. In a word, backsliders can only be re- 
 stored in the same way that sinners are justified, 
 — by believing in Christ for salvation. 
 
 Now, if you intend to try again this way of 
 access to God, see to it, I beseech you, that the 
 question of your believing is not left in the doubt- 
 ful state in which you allowed it to remain, when 
 you first attempted to believe with the heart ; for 
 if you leave it unsettled, or uncertain, you will 
 soon backslide again. You cannot go on well in 
 the ways of God, until you know that you are a 
 believer. All your former backslidings arose, 
 more or less, out of your former uncertainty on 
 this point. They had, indeed, other and ivorse 
 causes ; but this, too, was a cause. And in this 
 way : — not being sure that you were a believer, 
 you were not, and could not be, sure that you 
 had any right to the comfort of the great and pre- 
 cious promises. Accordingly you were afraid, 
 even in your best days, to apply them freely to 
 yourself. I mean, you did not, and durst not, 
 even tlien, apply the promises to your own case, 
 
176 CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 
 
 as you applied the laws of the Gospel. You were 
 quite sure that it was your bounden duty to re- 
 gard all the commandments of God as the rule 
 of your life ; but you were not sure that it was 
 your privilege to regard all the promises of God 
 as the portion of your soul. You pleaded, in- 
 deed, the promises in the name of Christ, and 
 hoped that God would fulfil them in your expe- 
 rience ; but you often doubted whether he would 
 do so, and felt that you had no certain hold on 
 Him or them. The consequence of all this was, 
 that the Gospel had not a firm hold upon you ; 
 and therefore, when temptation came, you were 
 not fully prepared to resist it. You could not 
 say, *' I am a child of God, and must not give 
 way to it — an heir of salvation, and need not be 
 vanquished by it." Temptation, therefore, had 
 nothing to contend with, but a sense of duty and 
 interest; and this it overcame. 
 
 It is of immense importance to understand this 
 point clearly. You were quite sincere, and not 
 unhappy, when you began to follow Christ : sal- 
 vation was your supreme object ; and the hope 
 of obtaining it, sooner or later, was the joy of 
 your heart. 
 
CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 177 
 
 You did not, however, expect to obtain it 
 soon ; but laid your account with years, perhaps, 
 of diligence, before you could make your calling 
 and election sure. And, at first, you were not 
 unwilling to pursue the assurance of salvation at 
 this expense of diligence. You thought, and 
 rightly too, that the witness and seal of the Spirit 
 would amply repay all the pains taken to obtain 
 them. However, before they could come, you 
 had begun to go astray. Neither your diligence 
 nor delight lasted long. They did not, indeed, 
 pass away so rapidly as the early cloud, or the 
 morning dew ; but they did pass away sooner 
 than you could have imagined it possible for 
 them. Now remember, and mark, — just in pro- 
 portion as your delight in the ways of God de- 
 clined, your diligence abated; and, exactly as 
 both declined, your doubts of the reality of your 
 conversion multiplied. Accordingly it was not 
 as a child of God — not as a believer — not even 
 in the character of a convert, — that you departed 
 from God : but, in leaving Him, you suspected 
 that you had never belonged to him. You, most 
 likely, even palliated your backslidings to your- 
 self, by the consideration that you had either 
 
178 CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 
 
 never avowed yourself to be a true convert, or 
 had not been sure of it in your own mind. Your 
 backsliding did not, therefore, appear to you as 
 the departure of a child from a father, but of a 
 servant from a master. You felt, indeed, that 
 you were risking your soul more than ever ; but 
 you felt, too, that it had never been safe. Thus, 
 you had not all, nor the best, motives of a con- 
 scious behever, to restrain you. You had, in- 
 deed, motives which ought to have restrained 
 you, and which would have done so, if they had 
 been kept stedfastly in view ; and it is both your 
 sin and shame, that you lost sight of them : but 
 still, you had not that magnetic motive which 
 confirmed the souls of the first disciples, — " We 
 love him because he first loved us^ Any love 
 you had to the Saviour arose either from the 
 consideration of his general love to the world, 
 or from the hope that he might, one day, mani- 
 fest his love to you ; and, as the manifestation 
 which you looked for did not come, the dili- 
 gence which you began with did not go on. 
 
 Now, if this were the real state of the matter 
 in your case, thus, it is evident, it will be again, 
 unless you get under the influence of the pecu- 
 
CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 179 
 
 Hart as well as the common, motives which bind 
 the soul to Christ and holiness. In returning to 
 God, therefore, see to it — that it is by believing 
 in Christ that you may *' be justified by the faith 
 of Christ,'' Your first approaches to the Saviour 
 came short of this. " The end" of whatever 
 faith you exercised then, was the remote, not 
 the immediate, salvation of your soul ; whereas 
 you are warranted, and v/elcome, immediately 
 upon committing your soul to Christ for a lioly 
 salvation, to believe that you *' shall be saved ;" 
 for God accepts at once, and Christ keeps for 
 ever, all who believe with the heart unto righ- 
 teousness. Credit this, therefore, in your own 
 case ; and thus, although future backsliding will 
 not be rendered impossible, it will be far less 
 likely to occur. 
 
 There is, however, a class of backsliders who 
 never went so far, either in believing or obeying 
 the Gospel, as in the case just stated. They 
 knew something of the way of salvation, and, for 
 a time, felt so much of its value that they could 
 not neglect secret prayer, nor pray without tears. 
 They were often quite overcome, both in their 
 closets and in the sanctuary, with sweet or 
 
180 CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 
 
 solemn impressions of divine and eternal things. 
 Their hearts melted or warmed whenever they 
 pondered on the great salvation. But now, all 
 this holy susceptibility and deep feeling is lost, 
 and, with it, all the hope which it gave rise to. 
 Accordingly, such persons, on looking back to 
 their former state of mind, and contrasting it 
 with the present, feel that they are backsliders 
 in heart and in life. The consciousness of this 
 melancholy fact overwhelms them at times ; but 
 when they think of returning to the Fountain of 
 living waters, the want of their old feelings of 
 love and relish discourages them. Hence the 
 language of some is, " O that it were with me 
 as in months past ! but I can neither feel nor 
 pray now as I did then, and, therefore, I dare 
 not hope. My soul no longer prospers, and 
 therefore I can take no comfort from the pro- 
 mises. I have lost my first love, and now I can 
 get no hold upon Christ for myself. I have 
 departed from God, and God has, in anger, hid 
 his face from me !" 
 
 Now this is certainly a deplorable case ; and 
 whoever would treat it harshly has not the spi- 
 rit of Christ. The sincerity and humility of the 
 
CAUSES OF BACKSLIDIxNG. 181 
 
 confession demand both respect and tenderness. 
 There are, however, mistakes mixed up with it, 
 which require to be corrected, even if some pain 
 be incurred by the correction of them. 
 
 Now, when you say that ** God has hid his 
 fece from you in anger," this impUes that you 
 once saw it in love, and enjoyed the light of his 
 couLtenance. But is this really true ? Is it cer- 
 tain that what you once enjoyed, was the divine 
 presence shining on your soul ? It is quite cer- 
 tain that you enjoyed something which was both 
 pleasing and profitable to you at the time : of that 
 there can be no doubt, seeing the memory of those 
 happy moments is so dear to you, and the loss of 
 them so deeply deplored by you. It is not, there- 
 fore, with any view of throwing discredit on your 
 word, that I ask. Is it the fact, that God ever ma- 
 nifested himself to your soul as your Father and 
 portion ? Every thing is not the divine presence 
 which is called so. What you felt then, may ap- 
 pear, when compared with your present darkness, 
 the light of God's countenance ; but you did not, 
 perhaps, think it so then. Remember what was 
 your opinion of that joy, when it was full, and 
 whilst it lasted ! Were you, then, sure that you 
 
 R 
 
182 CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 
 
 had obtained salvation — sure that you were ac- 
 cepted in the Beloved — sure that you were passed 
 from death to life ? Did not your joy arise rather 
 from a persuasion that you were in a/aiV way for 
 finding mercy at last ? Were you not quite as 
 much pleased with your own good feelings and in- 
 tentions as with the Gospel ? Was it not, chiefly, 
 because you felt as you did, that y6u hoped as 
 you did then ? Remember, as minutely as you 
 can, the precise character of your first love ! I 
 am not attempting to discredit its sincerity, but 
 to ascertain how far it was influenced by faith in 
 the atonement. What I want to get at in your 
 case, is, the degree in which your hopes and hap- 
 piness arose from believing views of the blood of 
 Christ. Now, you did not overlook that great 
 atonement, nor presume to hope apart from its 
 merits. In one sense, it was your only and final 
 plea at the mercy-seat : but did you, even in your 
 best days, think it a sufficient plea ? When you 
 pleaded it most fervently, did you feel it to be 
 enough, in itself and by itself, to obtain for you 
 acceptance with God ? Did you see nothing be- 
 tween you and hell, but the cross ? — and see that 
 to be quite enough to save you from the wrath to 
 
CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 183 
 
 come ? Did you really believe or perceive, that 
 nothing but faith was necessary in order to war- 
 rant hope ? Did it ever occur to you, even when 
 your faith was strongest, that your faith had saved 
 you ? Or, is it not the fact, that you attached far 
 more importance to your feelings than to your 
 faith ? Be honest ! — your believing went for 
 little in your own estimation. You thought it 
 the least part of your piety ; and that, not be- 
 cause it was weak, but because you had very 
 little faith in the use of faith itself, or did not 
 regard your own believing as faith. What you 
 believed was the last thing you thought of, when 
 examining the reality of your religion : you laid 
 the chief stress upon your tears, prayers, and holy 
 desires, and hardly allowed any weight to your 
 believing. This is self-evident ; for you still be- 
 lieve all that you did then, and still think your 
 belief of the Gospel of no consequence or real 
 use. It gives you no comfort now, and therefore 
 it was not it which comforted you then. 
 
 Surely all this forces upon you the suspicion, 
 if not the conviction, that whatever you felt, even 
 in your best days, you did not understand the 
 way of salvation by faith well. For, do you not 
 
184 CAUSES OP BACKSLIDING. 
 
 see, that if the atonement had really been the 
 sole ground of your hope then, and if faith in 
 it had been your hold of it, you could hope still, 
 because you believe still all that you did then ? 
 You are changed for the worse in many respects, 
 but your believing goes on as formerly. I mean 
 — you disbelieve none of the truths which you be- 
 lieved then. You have as much faith in the truth 
 of the Gospel as ever ; but having less feeling, 
 you attach no importance to it. You never laid 
 much stress upon your believing, and now you 
 think it of no use whatever. 
 
 The object of these remarks is, to convince 
 you, that however sincere, warm, or pleasing, 
 your former religious feelings were, you were, 
 all along, very imperfectly acquainted with the 
 way of salvation ; indeed, so ignorant of it, that 
 if all these feelings were restored in your heart, 
 they would not prove you to be a believer. The 
 loss of them proves that you are a backslider 
 from much that was good and promising ; but the 
 revival of them, in all their original tenderness, 
 would not constitute a child of God : for sinners 
 are made ** the sons of God, by faith in Christ 
 Jesus;" whereas, in your creed, this grand prin- 
 
CAUSES OF BACKSLIDING. 185 
 
 ciple of the Gospel has been overlooked or mis- 
 understood. Or, if you have talked of salvation 
 by faith, you must have meant, by faith, some- 
 thing more than the hearty belief of the truth 
 concerning the person and work of Christ. De- 
 pend on it, therefore, that you are not, and 
 never have been, so humble as you imagine ; for 
 had you seen or believed that there was no- 
 thing but the blood of the Lamb between you 
 and perishing, you must have seen too, that 
 the only way of escape is by trusting to that 
 blood. Well — it is open to your confidence 
 still; and, if you are persuaded of the truth of 
 its freeness and efficacy, why not trust in it at 
 once ? 
 
 Many other causes of backsliding might be 
 (perhaps ought to have been) enumerated; but 
 the moral causes of it are so abundantly ex- 
 plained in other works, that it seemed better to 
 confine this chapter to those mistakes, and to 
 that uncertainty, upo-n the subject of a personal 
 interest in Christ, which give such power to 
 temptation, by leaving the mind unsatisfied, 
 and unfortified with the hope of salvation. 
 
 R 2 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 No. XII. 
 
 SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 
 
 The perplexity of the serious is often in- 
 creased, for a time, by their trials or calami- 
 ties. And in this way: it seems hard, when 
 we are willing and trying to do well in the 
 service of God, to be hindered by an unusual 
 weight of affliction. Such a hindrance we did 
 not look for ; but almost calculated that provi^ 
 dence, as well as grace, would smile upon us 
 when we became the decided followers of the 
 Lamb. We may not, indeed, have ventured 
 to say so, in words, to ourselves ; but it was 
 almost an understood thing, and taken for 
 granted by us, that we should be in less dan- 
 ger than formerly. We intended to do so well, 
 and to be so devoted to God, that it seemed 
 
SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 187 
 
 unlikely that he v/ould allow any thing to be- 
 fall us, which was likely to hinder or unhinge 
 us : but God's thoughts are not as our thoughts 
 on this point. He has allowed both trials and 
 calamities to come upon us ; and these may 
 be only " the beginning of sorrows/' 
 
 But this, although painful, should not sur^ 
 prise us ; we had no warrant to calculate upon 
 exemption from tribulation. In fact, we ought 
 to have laid our account with passing through 
 **many tribulations," from the time we began 
 to walk in "the narrow way" to heaven. It 
 was *'M;nV<en," that we should have to do so: 
 it was obvious that all who had preceded us in 
 the way to Zion, had done so. If, therefore, 
 we flattered ourselves, in the face of all divine 
 testimony and of all human experience, the flat- 
 tery must have been aknost wilful, and alto- 
 gether inexcusable. "But no strange thing has 
 befallen" us, however much we may be star- 
 tled or staggered by our afflictions. We may 
 see the same crosses on the shoulders of many 
 of our brethren ; yea, and upon many who are 
 strangers to God and godliness, and who have 
 thus no resource in the day of calamity. Now 
 
188 SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 
 
 if it be so hard to bear up under heavy trials, 
 notwithstanding all that we know of the wisdom 
 of God, and of the tenderness of the Saviour, 
 how intolerable it must be to suffer without 
 hope! 
 
 This is a view of our trials, which we ought 
 never to lose sight of. They might have been 
 sent whilst we were strangers to prayer and 
 faith ; and, had they come before we fled to 
 Christ, they might have hurried us on to des- 
 peration, or hardened our hearts against the Gos- 
 pel ! Weigh this solemn fact. We should not 
 have escaped from all affliction, nor have had 
 any security against our present sufferings, by 
 continuing in "the broad way:" they might 
 have overtaken us there ; or what is worse, God 
 might have cursed us, by giving us our good 
 things in this life. Now, if the mighty hand 
 of God had struck us down whilst we were afar 
 off from him, and unwilling to draw nigh to 
 him, the consequences might have been fatal; 
 for, if we almost sink now, although we can cast 
 our burden on the Lord, we must have been 
 overwhelmed, if that burden had been laid upon 
 us before we knew the Lord. And if, at times. 
 
SANCTIFIED AFFLICTION6. 189 
 
 it almost alienate some of our feelings from him, 
 by its weight ; how easily might it have set all 
 the heart against him, whilst our hearts were 
 unregenerate ! This is not such an unusual ef- 
 fect of severe troubles as you may imagine. 
 We, indeed, see many brought to their " right 
 mind" by affliction ; and therefore we are apt 
 to suppose that the natural tendency of it is to 
 awaken the careless, and soften the obdurate ; 
 but whenever affliction does so, it is not by its 
 natural influence, but because it is overruled for 
 good, by grace. Accordingly in those circles 
 of life where the means of grace are neglected, 
 and the Gospel unknown, the usual eff'ect of 
 trouble is to harden the heart against God, or to 
 produce utter recklessness. There are, indeed, 
 some pleasing exceptions to this melancholy 
 fact, which occur ; but they are very few ; and 
 no wonder. How could it, in the nature of 
 things, be otherwise ? Affliction is well cal- 
 culated to enforce whatever a man knows of God 
 and salvation ; but, if he have grown up igno- 
 rant of the things which belong to his ** peace," 
 it cannot inform him of these things. Accord- 
 ingly, where they are not known beforehand, 
 
190 SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 
 
 there is nothing in the mind to work upon, but 
 its own powers and passions, and these are ra- 
 ther irritated than subdued by the rod. Had, 
 therefore, our severest trials come upon us whilst 
 we were ignorant, and out of the way, the pro- 
 bability is, that they would have seared our con- 
 science, and thus sealed our ruin. 
 
 Another reconciling consideration is — that our 
 former trials have been positively useful to us. 
 Our present affliction is not the first ; we have 
 had the cup at our lips before; and if it be bit- 
 terer than before, there is still no poison in it. 
 Hitherto it has proved salutary in every instance. 
 Accordingly we can trace an intimate connexion 
 between certain trials and the formation of our 
 religious character : they gave power and glory 
 to our views of salvation and eternity, and 
 brought our principles to the test; and assisted 
 in breaking up bad habits, and in bringing down 
 bad tempers ; for before we were afflicted we 
 "went astray." Upon our devotional character, 
 especially, they have had a mighty influence. 
 The spirit of prayer might almost be said to have 
 begun with the beginning of our sorrows ; we 
 came so near to God, and unbosomed and un- 
 
SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 191 
 
 burdened our souls so fully to him, when his 
 hand was first lifted up against us. We saw the 
 " needs be" for the rod then, and acknowledged 
 that in faithfulness he had afflicted us. Accord- 
 ingly, on looking back to the devotional exer- 
 cises of that time, and to the devotional habits 
 which grew out of them, we can truly say with 
 David, <' It was good for me that I was afflicted." 
 Now, with all this experience, why not expect 
 similar good from your present afflictions ? They 
 are heavier — but they are from the same hand, 
 and from the same heart too ; and therefore for 
 the same gracious purpose. 
 
 *« Bqt they have not the same influence," some 
 may say ; *' this stroke of the rod has quite 
 stunned me. My spirit is so overwhelmed within 
 me, and my mind so unhinged, that I cannot 
 pray, nor meditate, nor do any thing aright. 
 My former troubles endeared the mercy-seat and 
 the means of grace, and seemed to bring with 
 them the strength and the consolation required 
 for bearing them well; but this calamity has 
 swept, like a whirlwind, all my best principles 
 and feelings before it. Nothing rises in my 
 
192 SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 
 
 heart but dark and horrid thoughts ; and when I 
 try to pray them down, they rise more fiercely !" 
 This is, indeed, a deplorable case; but still, it 
 is only the natural effect of the first pressure of 
 heavy woes : they unsettle and upset the mind 
 for a time, and we ourselves aggravate their pres- 
 sure by rash conclusions. One rash conclusion, 
 which we are prone to draw, is, — that we never 
 can get over such a trial, nor be ourselves again. 
 We feel sure of this, and say that it is impossible 
 ever to surmount it, or to be happy again. 
 
 Perhaps this is your opinion of your own case. 
 It is, however, a conclusion utterly unwarranted 
 by Scripture or experience. Others have reco- 
 vered from strokes of providence equally stun- 
 ning. Asaph was quite as much overwhelmed 
 as you are. Besides, you are not prepared, 
 whatever you may think at present, to abide by 
 your own conclusion. It is not drawn from all 
 the facts of the case. You are looking only to 
 **the things which are seen, and temporal," 
 and overlooking " the things which are unseen, 
 and eternal," when you say that all is over in 
 your case. For surely you have not made up 
 
SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 193 
 
 your mind to brave and bear eternal separation 
 from God and the Lamb ! Surely you are not 
 willing to abandon your soul to perdition, be- 
 cause your temporal interests are gone to wreck ! 
 You cannot look a ruined eternity in the face, 
 and recklessly await its coming ! Such horrid 
 thoughts may, indeed, flash across your agitated 
 spirit for a moment ; but you dare not, cannot, 
 dwell upon them. Even if you indulge them for 
 a moment, there is a lurking hope that it will not 
 come to this : and even when you are most des- 
 perate, you are not prepared to affirm that God 
 cannot bring you out of these deep waters. 
 
 Consider this ; you are not prepared to throw 
 your precious and immortal soul into the general 
 wreck of your happiness. There is enough lost, 
 without losing that too ! Besides, you do not 
 believe yourself, when you try to say to your- 
 self, that all hope is for ever gone. Oh no! 
 you may not see how you can be restored, but 
 you know that restoration is not impossible. 
 You dare not go the length of maintaining that 
 God is your implacable and eternal enemy. 
 You may say, *« What can I think, seeing God 
 has allowed all this to come upon me ? Is no 
 
194 SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 
 
 my calamity a token, not only of his anger and 
 wrath, but of his hatred?'' No 1 for grievous 
 as it is, it is less than Job's; and in his there 
 was no hatred at all. Besides, you once thought, 
 and believed, that God was your friend. **Ah," 
 you say, "it is the recollection of that hope 
 which aggravates all my misery. I had begun 
 to feel as a child, and to act as a child, towards 
 the God of salvation ; and I seemed, to myself, 
 likely to do well in his service, until this came 
 upon me." Indeed ! upon what grounds did 
 you then rest the hope of your sonship ? Per- 
 haps these grounds remain as open and firm as 
 ever ; — if they were scriptural grounds, they ac- 
 tually do. If, however, you took up the hope 
 of salvation from the consideration that Provi- 
 dence was smiling on you ; and thought God 
 your Father, because your temporal lot pleased 
 you, you were risking your soul in a refuge of 
 lies ; and if so, your calamity is sent in mercy, 
 to drive you for refuge to the hope set before 
 you in the Gospel. But if you say, " It was 
 not wanted for that ; all my hope of salvation 
 and sonship was built, not on any thing in my 
 temporal lot, or in my moral character, but 
 
SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 195 
 
 wholly on the Rock of Ages ; Christ was all and 
 all as the ground of my hopes : if so, have you 
 not known — have you not heard, that Jesus 
 Christ is *' the same yesterday, to-day, and for 
 ever?'' Then all the grounds of your hope do 
 remain the same as ever. The foundation stand- 
 eth sure, whatever else is fallen. 
 
 Now the matter comes to a point ; for if it be 
 the fact, that your hopes were not founded on, 
 nor influenced by, the providential tokens of 
 divine favour in your lot, but were derived solely 
 from the person and work of Christ, — the 
 changes in your lot ought not to change hope 
 into despair, seeing the foundation of hope is 
 unchanged. But you say, " I am sadly changed 
 to the worse." In what ? You wonder at this 
 question, and are ready to say, " In every thing." 
 Now you should, of course, know best ; but, at 
 present, you are neither calm nor collected, and 
 therefore it may be that you judge too rashly. 
 There is, however, no doubt, a melancholy 
 change in the frame of your mind, and in your 
 devotional habits ; but still, these are not every 
 thing in religion : they are important and neces- 
 sary things ; but they are not the whole of piety,. 
 
196 SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 
 
 nor yet the vital principle of it. Faith in Christ 
 is the grand bond of union between the soul and 
 God ; and if that bond be not broken, your soul 
 may soon return to its quiet rest; — "cast down," 
 indeed, " but not destroyed ; perplexed, but not 
 in despair.'* But you say, " My faith is gone, 
 as well as ray hope ; they perished together, in 
 the day of my calamity." Indeed ! how could 
 that be ? Your calamity made a sad alteration 
 in you ; but it did not alter the Saviour, nor the 
 Gospel, nor the promises of God to believers. 
 Perhaps it did not alter your leading views or 
 convictions in regard to the person and work of 
 Christ. If not, your faith is not clean gone yet. 
 Examine the matter calmly : you were once fully 
 persuaded of the truth, and suitableness, and 
 value of the gospel.-^Is this persuasion changed ? 
 Is there any part of the divine testimony con- 
 cerning Christ, which you now disbelieve ? Do 
 you think less of the Saviour than formerly ? He 
 is not, of course, so precious in your estimation 
 as he was, when you could look up to him as 
 your own Saviour ; but you still believe him to 
 be the only Saviour. In regard to all but your- 
 self, you are fully persuaded that he is able to 
 
SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 197 
 
 save to the very uttermost. How then can you 
 say, that your faith is utterly perished ? Is there 
 no faith in a firm belief of all the truth concern- 
 ing the Saviour ? If not, what do you mean by 
 faith ? 
 
 Perhaps you never attached much importance 
 to ihe cordial belief of the truth itself ; but have, 
 hitherto, regarded nothing as faith, but the re- 
 liance which you placed on Christ for your own 
 salvation ; and therefore, as that reliance is shaken 
 to its very centre at present, you, of course, con- 
 clude that you have no faith. Now it is cer- 
 tainly very useless to believe the truth concerning 
 the Saviour, without trusting in him for salva- 
 tion. It is, however, the belief of the truth con- 
 cerning Him, which is the warrant for trusting 
 in Him. You may say, *' I cannot trust — cannot 
 rely, now; God seems to debar me, by visible 
 tokens of his anger." Now really, this is a rash 
 interpretation of his dealings. You cannot lay 
 your hand upon one text of Scripture, which says 
 that such judgments as yours are fatal, or final. 
 The whole tenor of Scripture stamps them as 
 being fatherly chastisements, inflicted in love, 
 not in hatred. And as to the assertion, that you 
 s 2 
 
198 SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 
 
 can no longer venture to rely on Christ for your- 
 self, it is equally unfounded. You, of course, 
 believe and feel it to be true ; but it is not less 
 false, in itself, on that account. The Spirit of 
 God is just as able to enable you to trust in 
 Christ now, as when he first won your confi- 
 dence to Him ; and, for any thing that appears 
 to the contrary, just as willing as ever. He is, 
 however, the Spirit of truth, and therefore works 
 by the truth ; and that truth which you require 
 to see, in order to the renewal of your trust in 
 Christ, is — that you are warranted and welcome 
 to rely on Him for your own salvation, upon the 
 single ground of still believing what God has 
 testified concerning him. Now, that testimony 
 you do believe with the heart still, unhinged and 
 overwhelmed as your heart is ! You have lost 
 your hold upon hope and peace, during this 
 stormy and dark day ; but you have not lost hold 
 of the truth of the Gospel. Well, on this ground 
 it is both your privilege and your duty to take up 
 hope again. Now, if you see this clearly, the 
 lesson is worth all that you have suffered in order 
 to learn it. 
 
 Assuming, therefore, that you now see how 
 
SANCTIFIED AFFLICTIONS. 199 
 
 your faith in Christ has secured your interest in 
 Christ, and maintained it throughout all the vi- 
 cissitudes of your case, what do you think of 
 your trials, when you view them in this light ? 
 Your soul is still safe ; God is still your friend ; 
 the Saviour has not forgotten you ; the Spirit 
 has not forsaken you; — whatever you have lost 
 or suffered. Is not this an up-making portion ? 
 Does not all this balance the weight of aiffliction, 
 and even lighten it ? You may now calculate 
 upon grace to help, and on strength to sustain 
 you. ** Humble" yourself under the mighty 
 hand of God, and he will exalt you in due sea- 
 son. This hot furnace was the fiery trial of your 
 faith, as well as your patience; and, accordingly, 
 it has purified your faith from much of its dross, 
 and increased its value in your own estimation. 
 And, is it not amazing to you to see the glorious 
 principle of salvation by faith, like a rainbow, 
 spanning and brightening the dark clouds of 
 your calamity ! Can you ever cease to wonder 
 at this wonder ? Saved by faith ! Now you can 
 do and endure, as seeing Him who is Invisible. 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 No. XIII. 
 
 EXPERIMENTAL MAXtMS- 
 
 *« Hold the Mystery of Faith in a pure corf 
 science.'^ In nothing else can it be held with 
 comfort or effect. When a bad conscience gets 
 between the mind and the Gospel, it soon brings 
 on an almost total eclipse upon both, until the 
 Gospel no longer appears what it really is, and 
 the mind can no longer apply it as formerly. 
 How naturally and inevitably this should be the 
 effect of a bad conscience, you may judge from 
 the fact— that you have found it difficult to get 
 hold, and to keep hold, ot the principle of sal- 
 vation by faith, notwithstanding all your efforts 
 to maintain a good conscience towards God and 
 man. Your conscience was, perhaps, never more 
 tender or watchful than during your inquiries into 
 
EXPERIMENTAL MAXIMS. 201 
 
 this principle ; and if, in this state of mind, you 
 have at one time been afraid to call your be- 
 lieving, faith ; and at another time afraid to con- 
 clude that you were justified ; — it is obvious that 
 a bad conscience must render such conclusions 
 impossible, upon scriptural or rational grounds. 
 The sober and solemn fact is, that the comforts 
 of the Gospel are in the hands of the Holy 
 Spirit; and therefore, when they are not em- 
 ployed for holy purposes, he withholds them, or, 
 what is worse, leaves the mind to the infatuation 
 of crying ** Peace," when there is no peace. 
 However clearly, therefore, you may now see 
 the way of your own salvation by faith, be sure 
 of this, — that as soon as you cease to strive to 
 maintain a good conscience towards God and 
 man, your hold upon the gospel will begin to 
 relax, and continue to lessen, until you sink into 
 greater perplexity than ever. A good hope can- 
 not be held in a bad conscience. 
 
 " Let the peace of God rule in your hearts,"*^ 
 Yes, let it ! Some do not allow it to rule or rest 
 in their hearts. " We have peace with God," 
 when the Holy Spirit enables us to see and be- 
 lieve that we are " justified by faith :" but this 
 
202 EXPERIMENTAL MAXIMS. 
 
 way of arriving at, and retaining, peace of con-- 
 science, is so different from all our natural, and 
 from the spirit of many of our acquired, ideas, 
 that we are prone to flinch from it, or to be 
 afraid of it ; and thus we unsettle that peace 
 which springs from believing. We talk, indeed, 
 of •' living a life of faith ;" but, in general, this 
 is made to include almost every thing but faith 
 itself. Nor is this the only way in which peace 
 with God is disturbed and lost : it comes into the 
 heart by believing ; but it comes to " rwZe" in 
 the heart ; and, therefore, if it be not allowed to 
 sway its sceptre over our habits and tempers, it 
 will not shed its sweet influences over our hopes. 
 Oh, charge all that is within you, to let it rule 
 over you ! 
 
 *' Pray always with all prayer and supplica- 
 tion,'" If you know yourself to be a believer, 
 you have not, of course, to pray for faith itself, 
 but for the increase and the continuance of it ; 
 nor for justification itself, but for the habitual 
 sense of it, and for the pardon of daily sins ; nor 
 for sonship itself, but for the spirit of adoption ; 
 nor fot the new birth itself, but for the progress 
 and perfection of regeneration : but what a field 
 
EXPERIMENTAL MAXIMS. 203 
 
 —what occasion— for frequent and fervent prayer 
 is thus before you ! And you will require to 
 pray, until your spirit be disembodied for praise. 
 Without prayer, you cannot maintain a good 
 conscience : without prayer, you cannot keep be- 
 fore your mind the principles or the facts of the 
 Gospel, which have relieved you : without prayer, 
 the spirit of adoption will evaporate as morning 
 dew: without prayer, the joints and sinews of 
 your moral and religious character will relax and 
 fail. You never can realize as your Father, the 
 God you are reluctant to commune with. You 
 may call him so before others ; but you will be 
 unable to think him so in your own mind. 
 
 *« TVhen thou art converted, strengthen thy 
 brethren.'* Some, when they discover the per- 
 fect simplicity of the Gospel, and see clearly 
 that the cordial belief of it is faith, and that 
 faith itself settles the question of acceptance with 
 God, — have no patience with those who are 
 groping their way to these great principles, and 
 no respect for those who happen to state them 
 less clearly. Penitents are thus treated with 
 harshness ; and preachers, who are as intent as 
 any on making Christ all and all in salvation, 
 
204 EXPERIMENTAL MAXIMS. 
 
 are branded as legalists and enemies of the 
 Cross. Now, to say the least of such conduct, 
 it is really despicable / How can such persons 
 forget the slowness of their own hearts to ap- 
 prehend and believe the whole of the gospel ? 
 Guard against this censorious spirit ! You did 
 not see your own way or welcome at once, nor 
 soon, nor easily. And it is more than probable, 
 that one half of the patience, which you have 
 required in your own case, will be quite sufficient 
 to bring these humble inquirers into the glorious 
 liberty of the children of God, For they are not 
 unbelieverSi because unable yet to see how faith 
 itself unites the soul to Christ. In general, they 
 believe with the heart all the truth with which 
 God has connected the promise of salvation ; so 
 that, on your own principles, they are safe, 
 without knowing that they are so. " Streiigthen,^* 
 therefore, instead of staggering, them. 
 
 ** Be ye followers of God as dear children," 
 Much, both of your personal comfort and relative 
 usefulness, depends on acting upon this principle. 
 The theoretic or logical conclusion that you are 
 a child of God, because you believe in Christ, 
 will not last long, if you cease to follow the Lord 
 
EXPERIMENTAL MAXIMS. 205 
 
 fully. It is, however, equally true that you will 
 not long follow him fully, if you lose sight of 
 this conclusion. — He who would follow as a 
 child of God, must believe that he is a child of 
 God. Now, if you believe this in your own 
 case, do speak and act agreeably to your rela- 
 tionship. 1 do not mean, of course, that you 
 should boast of, or obtrude on others, the hope 
 of your sonship ; but you may, you ought, to 
 appear in your real character. By doing so 
 habitually, you will feel more and more bound 
 to cultivate the image and spirit of a child ; and 
 others, seeing not only your good works, but 
 your good hopes also, will feel that religion 
 gives the happiness it promises. Whereas when 
 the careless, or the undecided, see nothing more 
 than practical godliness in the pious, and hear 
 nothing from them but details of fears, and 
 doubts, and strivings ; they are led to argue that 
 religion, however good, is joyless, and that the 
 pious are as uncertain as themselves of salvation. 
 And what else can they think, if you say nothing 
 of your enjoyments? Casting " pearls before 
 swine" is wrong ; but, in general, wherever you 
 can speak of your sense of duty with propriety, 
 
 T 
 
206 EXPERIMENTAL MAXIMS. 
 
 you may say something of your privileges and 
 prospects too. 
 
 ** Follow peace with all men, and holiness, 
 without which no man shall see the Lord." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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