[AN EXTRACT]
“You must give up that which alone elevates man— his association with God, or associate him with Him according to what He is. The nature and character of God must be maintained, or it is not with Him I am associated. And I must have morally the qualities which judge of good and evil, as He does, to be really associated with Him. But I do judge the evil, and see the guilt. Now Christianity meets this, and gives me a full Messing, because it gives me life. He that hath the Son hath life. He is a life-giving Spirit. But then, besides that, it takes away all guilt from me. I can judge evil fully in my heart and conscience, because I know I shall never be judged for it,—that Christ has by Himself purged my sins, and sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. I affirm, that without these two principles—a new life and the perfect purging of sins according to God's nature by redemption, no real moral elevation of man can take place, because he cannot be spiritually associated with God according to the perfection of God's nature. The communication of the divine nature, though absolutely necessary, does not suffice, because the communication of that nature makes one judge evil as God does, at any rate in principle. I see the selfishness and impurity that is in man's mind, that is now in mine. And for that very reason I see guilt and wretchedness in myself. I have the conscience of evil or guilt (not necessarily by crimes and vices, but by comparing my whole inward life with the loveliness of divine nature) on my soul. My conscience must be purged for God, as a consciously responsible creature before Him, that my heart may be free before Him,—that His holy nature, which must repel evil, and which is the very source of my delight, may be maintained even for my soul to enjoy ... . The purging the conscience by a work done without us, and which is perfect in glorifying God, gives me unhindered delight in Him, and, I may add, in the love which has done it. God has put this in the simplest way—blessed be His name!—for simple souls; but it is of the deepest moral necessary' truth. You, may have amiable men, but no God if' you have not this. A truly upright soul, a divinely-taught soul, has a moral need that the love of God, the favor which is its light and its joy, should be a righteous favor. As Scripture speaks, grace reigns through righteousness; hence that God should righteously not see sin upon it; has need, therefore, that the conscience should be purged. And this it has through the truth that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. Without it God's love would be an unholy love; would not be God or love at all. We walk in the light as God is in the light, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses from all sin. Hence comes that bright and blessed testimony, though there in outward figures, ' He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor beheld perverseness in Israel.'”