PLAIN AND SEARCHING THOUGHTS.
Reader, this is an unspeakably important chapter for you to ponder. You must take up the candle of the Lord, as I have said, and go down into the very depths of the soul to search its hidden recesses. Nor should you trust to your own scrutiny. Like David, you should earnestly pray to God to search you. Ps. cxxxix, 23, 24. He knew how prone we are to self-love, and self-deception; how sin lies hidden in the folds of the heart's deceit, and therefore he begged the trial and scrutiny of eyes more piercing and less partial than his own. We are all liable to judge too favorably of our own case. Do, do consider the fatal, the dreadful, the eternal consequences of a mistake on this subject! O the idea of imagining we are going on to heaven, when, step by step, we are advancing to hell! Is this possible? It is; and the very possibility should awaken our alarm. Is it probable? It is; and this should increase our alarm. Is it certain? It is; and this should raise still higher our anxiety. Is it common? It is; and this should carry our solicitude to the highest pitch. What said Christ? Read with awe and trembling Matt. vii, 21, 23. Read, I say, this passage, in which the Lord with his own hand rings the tocsin and sounds the alarm through the whole of the church. Ought you not to examine? Is not there need of it? Is it not all but madness to go on without it? Mistake! What, in such a matter as salvation? Mistake! What, in a matter in which an error will require, as I have often said, an eternity to deplore it? Are you quite sure this is not your case? Take up the subject, then, and put the following questions to your soul: Am I right, and have I good evidence that I am truly converted to God—a real christian? If I am a true christian, am I really an advancing one, or am I mistaking a declining state for an advancing one? Am I mistaking a lengthened term of profession for a genuine improvement? Am I putting an increase of knowledge, and of ability to talk about religion, in the place of an increase of holiness? Does it satisfy me to grow in knowledge and lamentation of my corruptions without mortifying them? Am I confounding sectarianism with true piety; attachment to some preacher with love for the truth; and zeal for some favorite theory with regard for the gospel? Is my mortification of sin confined to some one corruption, which interest, ease or reputation, may require me to surrender; or is it directed against all sin? Is my religion mere excitement of the emotions, and my growth only a greater excitability? or is my will more and more determined for God, my conscience more tender, and my life more holy? Inquire, I beseech you, into these things. Be determined, by God's grace, to know the real state of the case, and to be under no mistake. Be this your prayer: "O God of truth, thou that searchest the hearts and triest the reins of the children of men, thou knowest that I would not for ten thousand worlds be deceived about my spiritual state. Do thou, who knowest me altogether, make known to me what I really am in thy sight. Painful as it would be to find out that I have been deceiving myself, this were infinitely better than for me to go on in error till the mistake is past being rectified. I want to know my real state. Even if I am a christian, and yet mistaking declension for progress, I wish to know this also. Let my spiritual insight be clear, my self-acquaintance be accurate. Suffer me on no account to deceive myself, even as regards my progress or decline."—Christian Progress.