This religion tests the power of living faith, and is a worship of spirit and truth. It brings NEAR the realities of the invisible, the true, and the eternal. It is the power of the manifestation of the truth of God, and depends not on the forms and traditions of men. It realizes the personality, and approaching revelation of the son of God. Which glory so irradiates the soul, who savingly receives it, that the same loathing of self, and worldliness ensues, which the Prophet expressed when he saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. He said, "Woe is me for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts."
This penitence, humiliation, and going out of self, as in the case of Isaiah, is followed by the reception of the Holy Spirit, in the application of the live coals from the altar of mercy, by which their iniquity is taken away, and their sins purged. With this assurance of acceptance with God, they rejoice with exceeding joy, at the evidence of his near approach, they are cut loose from the world, and entirely consecrated to the coming glory.
This religion gives power alike over the love and fascinations of earth, and prepares the spirit to meet with meekness, and calm endurance, the opposition of sinners, and the ridicule, and contempt, of a professing world. It is, as it were, a mingling, or foreshadowing, of the future with the present, by which the reality and perfections of the eternal, extinguish the false and unreal, with which we are surrounded. Among the seared and chilling bowers of time, there are many weary hearts that sigh for a better shore, and a purer sky. Why then do they linger? The Second Advent of the Prince of Peace, will soon unfold again the gates of Paradise. Why will they not BELIEVE, and enter in and be eternally at rest?