constitutes the sufficient ground of a sober, sincere, and valid moral endeavor on our part. God will give such impulse and emphasis to his teaching as may seem good to him. Terrors and fervors are not intended to be permanent, for then they would become no longer terrors and fervors. You see a road, a highway. Some one made it. It is continuous-always the same way, always the same work. But here the ground is smooth, and there the rock was smitten, and the work done with noise and difficulty. Would you allow anybody to say to you :—'Ah, here we have it— here the way was made, right here, where the rock was smitten and the spring gushed out?' 'But this is only a small part of the whole,' you would say. It was done for the sake of the whole. It is one work. The particulars are of little account compared with the whole.' The Lord has his way in your whole life. The Father is not less the Father because we forget him in his gentleness. He is not more the Father when he seems severe, and we begin to remember him. The Son is not less the Son because he is not always showing us signs and wonders; for soon they would cease to be signs and wonders, if we were only to stare. Every day is our wonder when we believe. The Spirit is not less the Spirit for not always giving you the baptism of tears or ecstasies. He will try us with a calm, clear teaching of sin and righteousness addressed to our judgment. He will plead with us in behalf of the right, because it is the right against the wrong, because it is the wrong. He will ask us to make those clear, unterrifying distinctions, which he discloses, as sacred as his own name; and to account their violation, under whatever seduction, as doing despite to the Spirit of grace. Thus obedient, we may well trust him to sanctify us wholly. Finally, the Spirit of truth always reproves the world and vindicates God. Conviction and reproof interpenetrate each other. Every ray of divine light shining in our souls puts us to shame. No more hard, unworthy thoughts of God under this tuition, but smiting upon the breast, with 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' Not always the passionate grief, but always the religious humility and hatred of wrong; always the prayer-forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. In the blindness of the mind by nature, the spiritual sense discovers little of righteousness and little of sin. But when the divine revelation comes, sin revives. Sin by the commandment becomes exceeding sinful. When Christ is formed in the soul-when his Spirit takes up his abode in us, making us his temples, then out go the money-changers, the buyers and the sellers. No profane! The temple of God is holy. The old habits and rites have become a grievous burden and disgrace; and often our new worship becomes a penance, so far is it from reaching his worthiness. We are less than the least of all his mercies. Wherefore let the Righteous One reprove us. It shall be sweet and salutary. It shall work out the peaceable fruits of righteousness. To-day, on our knees, let us give glory to God. To-day, after so long time, to-day let us hear his voice. Now let us confess our sins to Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, 'with a humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart, to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same by his infinite goodness and mercy.' |