open our eyes

and see that the only thing for men and women whom God has made is to obey Him?  How can we prosper by doing anything else?  It is ill fighting against God.  But some one may say, “I know I have sinned, and I do wish and long to obey God, but I am so weak, and my sins have so entangled me, that I cannot obey God.  I long to do so.  I feel and know, when I look back, that all my sin and shame and unhappiness come from being proud and self-willed and determined to have my own way.  But I cannot mend.”

Do not despair, poor soul!  I had a thousand times sooner hear you say that you cannot mend than that you can.  For those who really feel they cannot mend—those who are really weary and worn out with the burden of their sins—those

who are tired out with their own wilfulness, and feel ready to lie down and die, like a spent horse, and say, “God take me away, no matter to what place; I am not fit to live here on earth, a shame and a torment to myself day and night”—those who are in that state of mind are very near—very near—finding out glorious news.

God knows as well as you what you have to struggle against; ay, a thousand times better.  He knows—What does He not know?  Therefore pray to Him.  Cry to Him to make your will like His own will, that you may love what He loves, hate what He hates, and do what He wishes you to do; and you will surely find it come true that those who try to mend, and yet know that they cannot mend themselves, God will mend them.

National Sermons.

Sin, αμαρτια, is literally, as it signifies, the missing of a mark; and that each miss brings a penalty, or rather is itself the penalty, is to me the best of news, and gives me hope for myself and for every human being, past, present, and future, for it makes me look on them all as children under a paternal education, who are being taught to become aware of, and use their own powers in God’s house, the universe, and for God’s work in it; and in proportion as they learn to do that, they attain salvation, σωτηρια, literally health and wholeness of spirit, which is, like the health of the body, its own reward.

Letters and Memories.

If in sorrow the thought strikes you that you are punished for your sins, mourn for them, but not for the happiness they

have prevented.  Rather thank God that He has stopped you in time, and remember His promises of restoring us if we profit by His chastisement.

Letters and Memories.

Ah! how many a poor, foolish creature, in misery and shame, with guilty conscience and sad heart, tries to forget his sin, to forget his sorrow; but he cannot.  He is sick and tired of sin.  He is miserable, and he hardly knows why.  There is a longing, and craving, and hunger at his heart after something better.  Then he begins to remember his Heavenly Father’s house.  Old words, which he learnt in childhood; good old words out of his Catechism and Bible, start up strangely in his mind.  He had forgotten them, laughed at them perhaps in his

wild days.  But now they come up, he does not know where from, like beautiful ghosts gliding in.  And he is ashamed of them.  They reproach him, the dear old lessons; and at last he says, “Would God that I were a little child again; once more an innocent little child at my mother’s knee!  Perhaps I have been a fool; and the old Sunday books were right after all.  At least, I am miserable!  I thought I was my own master, but perhaps He about whom I used to read in the old Sunday books is my Master after all.  At least, I am not my own master; I am a slave.  Perhaps I have been fighting against Him, against the Lord God, all this time, and now He has shown me that He is the stronger of the two.”

And when the Lord has drawn a man thus far, does He stop?  Not so.  He does not leave His work half done.  If the work is half done, it is that we stop, not that He stops.  Whoever comes to Him, however confusedly, or clumsily, or even lazily they may come, He will in no wise cast out.  He may afflict them still more to cure that confusion and laziness; but He is a physician who never sends a patient away, or keeps him waiting for a single hour.

National Sermons.

The blessed St. Augustine found he could never conquer his own sins by arguing with himself, or by any other means, till he got to know God, and to see that God was the Lord.  And when his spirit was utterly broken, when he saw himself to have been a fool and blind all along—then

the old words which he learned at his mother’s knee came up to his mind, and he knew that God had been watching, guiding him, letting him go wrong only to show him the folly of going wrong, caring for him, bearing with him, pleading with his conscience, alluring him back to the only true happiness, as a loving father will a rebellious and self-willed child; and he became a changed man.  To that blessed state may God of His great mercy bring us in His own good time.  And if He does bring us to it, it is little matter whether He brings us to it through joy or through sorrow, through honour or through shame, through the Garden of Eden or through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.  For what matter how bitter the medicine is if it does but save our lives?

National Sermons.

. . .  Your sense of sin is not fanaticism; it is, I suppose, simple consciousness of fact.  As for helping you to Christ, I do not believe I can one inch.  I can see no hope but in prayer, in going to Him yourself, and saying: “Lord, if Thou art there, if Thou art at all, if this be not all a lie, fulfil Thy reputed promises, and give me peace and the sense of forgiveness, and the feeling that, bad as I may be, Thou lovest me still, seeing all, understanding all, and therefore making allowance for all!”

I have had to do that in past days; to challenge Him through outer darkness and the silence of night, till I almost expected that He would vindicate His own honour by appearing visibly, as He did to St. Paul and St. John; but He answered in

the still, small voice only; yet that was enough.

Letters and Memories.

. . .  Dear friend, the secret of life for you and for me is to lay our purposes and our characters continually before Him who made them, and cry, “Do Thou purge me, and so alone shall I be clean.  Thou requirest truth in the inward parts.  Thou wilt make me to understand wisdom secretly.”  What more rational belief?  For surely if there be any God, and He made us at first, He who makes can also mend His own work if it gets out of gear.  What more miraculous in the doctrines of regeneration and renewal than in the mere fact of creation?

Letters and Memories.

As for the sins of youth, what says the 130th Psalm?  If Thou, Lord, were extreme to mark what is done amiss, who could abide it?  But there is mercy with Him, therefore shall He be feared.  And how to fear God I know not better than