Sore Conflicts
Beloved Brethren and Readers:--When enabled to see my unworthiness and ignorance, I am often tempted through these and the many sore trials and self denials involved, to never speak or write of my pure and exalted Lord any more. But when God gives me ability to also see and feel that my sins are cleansed by the blood of Christ, when he enables me to look away from my ignorance to Christ's wisdom, and from my depravity to Christ's holiness—the conflict is over. And soon the love of Christ is often so very warm in my soul that I feel willing and desirous to forsake all, to endure all, and speak to living believers and to careless sinners, of Jesus' great love and special redemption. Satan cannot now hinder. But to all around I want to tell that this special love and work of Jesus shall be imputed to all believers--to all who ever have or ever shall be quickened by the Spirit, and divinely enabled to believe on Christ.
"When on the cross my Lord I see,
Bleeding to death for wretched me,
Satan and sin no more can move,
For I am all transformed to love."
The cross is now my favorite theme and chief delight. A sweet heavenly delight mingled with grief is stirred in my soul by the theme of the cross. When permitted by faith to look up into the pure and loving face of Jesus, so calm and inviting, so merciful and willing to endure and suffer for my sins, O, I am so deeply grieved that my sins pierced him!
"See the Lord of glory dying!
See him gasping hear him crying!
Look, ye sinners, ye who hung him!
Look how deep your sins have stung him!"
But "it is finished." His sufferings are all past, and "by his stripes I am healed." So now gratitude and love, inexpressible, mingles with the grief, and my soul is so happy.
"With pleasing grief and mournful joy,
My spirit now is filled;
That I should such a life destroy,
Yet live by him I killed."
O! my dear Saviour! so meek and approachable, and so willing to suffer even for me a wretched sinner. Surely of all persons, I should love him most. O! may my dwarfed and shrunken soul be wholly consecrated to Jesus! May my whole life be gladly devoted to his service.
O! that men would cease to go on in such impudent sin and outrage against the justice and holiness of God. Surely "for all these things" He will bring them to judgment. Nevertheless though they harden their hearts more and more by wicked rebellion against His goodness and longsuffering, yet God will have compassion on whom he will have compassion, and save in the midst of deserved wrath.
Helpless, depraved man, ignorant of salvation by the free grace and imputed righteousness of Christ alone, in vain partly depends on his own puny efforts and imperfect obedience, in order to eternal salvation. Now, while man's obedience is right, and for proper uses should be sought and encouraged with all earnestness and zeal; yet his obedience or good works can never make him a good tree or a child of God. Man's good works always follow the "new birth," as fruit or proof that the tree is already made good. And just as surely as the tree is made good the fruit will be made good. But let no one depend wholly nor in part on good works or human obedience in order to eternal salvation. Human obedience is too imperfect to bear the gaze of God's purity. Man's righteousness is too filthy to help relieve the foul plague of sin. God is perfect, and will only accept a perfect righteousness--"the righteousness of God." Rom. iii. 20-26: The perfect obedience or righteousness of the dear dying Lamb of God, singly and freely imputed to the sinner, is the only acceptable offering for sin. This is my only hope. This is the way from earth to heaven. Jesus is "the way.”
His sufferings and blood were most freely given for all loving believers on Christ, all that feel helpless, lost and ruined by sin. Though men are lost and ruined by sin, yet by the obedience of Jesus Christ "many shall be made righteous." To all in the house--to all men everywhere, I want to tell that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. When brought into tender sympathy with Jesus in his extreme suffering and bitter death, and made to think of my own helpless state and desperately wicked ways when dead in sins, when reminded that Jesus still loved me and died for my sins though a rebel against him--then my soul is so filled with love for Jesus and for my fellow-beings, that though I suffer the loss of all things, in obedience to God, I must speak even to the vilest sinners concerning my loving and merciful Saviour. He is the only Saviour. Human merit and human efforts can never save nor help to save, from the justly deserved fire of an awful hell. But while with men salvation is impossible, "with God all things are possible." I feel if such a vile sinner as myself has received mercy, no one need despair. "The Son quickeneth whom he will" even though a bloody Manasseh or a wicked Mary Magdaline.
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