June 1st, 1869.
I find the secret of all peaceful rest in God in Rom. 3 to 8:10, which contains God's judgment upon me as a creature before its Creator, and the provision which, for His own name's sake, He has made to enable a ruined creature, lost and undone in itself, to find and to be able to boast in its having rest in Him.
True, there is a painful lesson to be learned and appropriated too; viz., that " I am a poor sinner and nothing at all," and that to want to be something in myself, or somebody, is all vanity. Jesus Christ, of God's providing for the sinner, alone can give rest to a sinner, or be his rest of heart and mind and soul; and true too it is that until we get to the end of self, and give it up as irremediably bad (so bad that even God Himself can bring no goodness out of it, but has to produce a new creature), we shall still be looking for goodness in self.
G. V. W.