AN EXTRACT.
“WE are not called on to believe that we do believe, but to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, by whom we have access, and are brought into perfect present favor, every cloud that could hide God's love removed, and can rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ‘Thy favor is better than life, therefore I can praise thee while I live;' so that in the midst of the wilderness weariness we can rejoice.
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“As regards the standing and peace of the soul, it is deeply important to see that while what we are ever struggling for is to get something in which we can come before God, it is God who comes before us in the gospel with His Son as our only righteousness; it is unto all, but upon those who believe. Mark here another thing that is connected with peace of soul. Some may say, I don't deny His divine righteousness, I believe it; but how am I to know that I have a share in it? Is it applied to me? I want it applied to my soul.' Well, God has applied it to you, if you believe; if, in the consciousness of your sinfulness, you have believed the record God has given of His Son, then you have had it applied to your soul; for it is upon all them that believe: you are righteous. If you go on tampering with sin or the world, God must work this out of you; that is true, and the same is the case if there be much of the pride of self-righteousness; but the thing that is believed is what His Son is, and has done. If there is tampering with sin or the world in our souls it prevents our laying hold of the truth; not even if we have found divine righteousness can we have the joy of the Holy Ghost in our hearts; for God must be real to us. But what we have to rest on is Christ's dying for our sins, and the acceptableness of Christ's person.
“Many a Christian would be glad to rest, and as they think to rest there. But in the last thought they deceive themselves; they look for something better in themselves than they have found, but that is not submitting to God's righteousness, not submitting to what Christ is. They have not learned the value of the cross, nor its meaning. If they had learned its value, they would not be trembling for fear; for how could they be trembling if they knew that their sins are put away? How could they be looking for good in themselves if they knew that the cross was the final condemnation of all flesh in itself? You say that you have no other confidence than the cross; that may be as to your conviction of the truth, and you may feel your need of it in a certain sense, so as to know that you cannot do without it. I suppose you do, or you would not look to it; but you have not yet learned the value of the cross, which purges the conscience by the absolute putting away of sin. And the secret of it is that you still look for something besides sin in yourself —that is there is still the looking for, still some hankering after your own goodness lurking within. You do not think yourself so thoroughly bad as the cross proves you to be; for you are what needed it. You are sin in your nature as in your acts. God in it has ‘condemned sin in the flesh' as needing that abhorring on His part, and that is all you are in yourself. You have yet to learn that God justifies the ungodly; you will have more than that, but you must come to that first. It is being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus;' it is not mere justification from sins, but actual deliverance—entire redemption.”