“If I wake in the night I am still with Him. I have liberty to pour out my awed thoughts to Him in still and fearless reverence, and my gentle thoughts in confidential love, and my troubled thoughts in prayer, and my gladsome thoughts in the songs of the Spirit. If I wish it, when I travel, I travel in divine society; when I walk in the midst of trouble, He revives me; when I droop in the valley of the shadow of death, He comforts me; when I am engaged in no defined acts of devotion—when not a voice is whispered nor a look reflected, ‘Tender thoughts within me burn, to feel a Friend is nigh.’ When I go into the solitudes of nature, I feel around me a thinking, silent life, and all the air is love. ‘Surely God is in the place.’ I hear His voice in the song of the winds and in the chime of the waters. The earth rocks to His tread in the tempest; at His smile the wilderness breaks forth into singing. When I return to my home, He who made ‘the desert rejoice,’ makes the solitary place glad. I can find Him anywhere, at all times, and find Him as my Friend: in the workshop, in the loft all hung with cobwebs, behind the screen of the shaded lane, I can find a holy of holies; and solitude of spirit, where I can find no solitude of place, is often to me none other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven.’”
The Rom. 7 condition was not before the Holy Ghost came down. The same thing that brought out the gospel brought out righteousness; brought out the wrath of God. Before the Holy Ghost came, there was not the kind of sense of sin we have, as separating from God; nor of forgiveness. Rom. 7 discusses the nature only. You may put it before or after the knowledge of the forgiveness of sins, but it is greatly modified by being after. In order to give it its full character, he contemplates it under the law.