What I Am, and what I Will Try to Be.
I FIND I can build up no firm and stable hope, unless I can lay my foundation on the naked rock of such a word of God as that "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." I find I can get no abiding peace unless "being justified by faith, I have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." I find I can obtain no strength against sin for duty, or towards holiness and heaven, except as those divine words are graven upon my heart, (and oh, how often do the fading characters need to be renewed!) "I have no sufficiency of myself to think anything as of myself, but my sufficiency is of God." In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. "Surely in the Lord have I righteousness and strength." O the unutterable depth of the depravity and wickedness of this heart! One moment I am sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and the next hovering over the bottomless pit One moment occupied with thoughts and joys of heavenly purity and sweetness—the very next, feeling "the fiery darts of the wicked one," rankling in my tortured heart. "In me there dwelleth no good thing." "The thoughts of the imaginations of my heart are only evil, and that continually!" How naked is my soul of true virtue! How destitute of holy strength! Had I not, blessed Saviour, the spotless robe of thy righteousness to cover myself withal, and that sure word of thine to lean upon, "My grace is sufficient for thee," I would give up this long-waged and always renewing conflict in despair. Depart, O my soul, from the sandy region of thine own works, merits and resolutions! Often hast thou "begun to build" there, but wast never "able to finish." As soon as the structure began to rise to a promising hight, the streams of recent depravity undermined it, the storms of passion and temptation smote it, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof! Why renew so hopeless and useless a labor? Be it thy whole care to win Christ and be found in him, not having thine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is of the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." I will fear God; for then "it shall be well with me." I will delight myself in God; for then will he give me the desires of my heart. Ps. xxxvii. I will seek God; for then "I shall live;" [Amos v.] then shall I find him, [Luke xii.] and possessing him, what is there or can there be which I shall not have? "For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." I will hope in his mercy; for then will he take "pleasure in me." I will try in every possible way to "continue with Christ in his temptations;" for then will he "appoint unto me a kingdom, even as the Father hath appointed unto him." I will abound in those services and works for which no recompense can be made me in this world; for then "great shall be my reward. I shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just." And I had rather be recompensed then. I had rather be paid off in God's measure than in man's—rather on the scale of eternity and immensity, than of time and of this little and crumbling world. The gold of this world I may lose; but the "true riches" I cannot. The gold and silver of this world are often cankered, and the rust thereof doth eat their possessor's flesh as it were fire. But no such corruption is possible in the pure gold of the kingdom of God. The garments of this world are often moth-eaten. But the white robes in which the blood washed and redeemed of Christ shall be arrayed, shall be of heavenly fabric, and undecaying as the "incorruptible body" which they shall clothe. The crowns of this world—if God would give me one of them, I could not be sure of it for an hour. How many of these crowns have fallen from the heads of their wearers, and in fact borne down these heads into the blood-stained dust along with them! Who would wish to put on the crown of the Czar or the Sultan this day, if even a wish could win them? See the vast energies of Napoleon exerted to gain a crown and transmit it to his family—and with what reward but a rocky isle as the prison of his last years, a life of confinement and misery, and an early death to his only son, and a cup of calamity not yet exhausted, to his descendants! But "a crown of glory that fadeth not away," "a crown of life," "a crown of righteousness,"—that is something worth striving for. Fix thy steady gaze on it, O my soul, and leave all, lose all, in order to win it. These are the things which I mean to do, whatsoever else I leave undone. Not one of them can I fulfill, O Lord, without thee. Work in me the firm resolve, the steady hope, the fearless courage, the unfaltering perseverance. Thou hast implanted the desire; for once I had it not, even in the smallest degree. O give that desire strength, purity, constancy! I cannot err in asking that which thou hast often promised, which thou hast even commanded me to ask, and in giving which thou art greatly glorified and I am sanctified, redeemed, exalted195to thee. O blessed be God, who has permitted me to aspire so high as to be a brother of angels, a son of God, a king in eternity; and who accounts it no sin in me to be ambitious, provided only my ambition reaches after objects divinely great and eternally enduring—but on the contrary, makes the exalted and most glorious objects after which I can aspire, the wisest of all attainments.—Sel.