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Love is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love.
Only let your present and past distress make you feel and acknowledge this twofold great truth: first, that in and of yourself, you are nothing but darkness, vanity, and misery; secondly, that of yourself, you can no more help yourself to light and comfort, than you can create an angel. People at all times can seem to assent to these two truths, but then it is an assent which has no depth or reality, and so is of little or no use, but your condition has opened your heart for a deep and full conviction of these truths. Now give way, I beseech you, to this conviction, and hold these two truths, in the same degree of certainty as you know two and two to be four, and then you are with the prodigal come to yourself, and above half your work is done.
Receive every inward and outward trouble, every disappointment, pain, uneasiness, temptation, darkness, and desolation, with both your hands, as a true opportunity and blessed occasion of dying to self, and entering into a fuller fellowship with your self-denying, suffering savior. Look at no inward or outward trouble in any other view; reject every other thought about it, and then every kind of trial and distress will become the blessed day of your prosperity. Be afraid of seeking or finding comfort in anything but God alone: For that which gives you comfort, takes so much of your heart from God.
What is it that any thoughtful, serious men could wish for, but to have a new heart, and a new spirit, free from the hellish self-tormenting elements of selfishness, envy, pride, and wrath.
Self is the whole evil of fallen nature; self-denial is our capacity of being saved; humility is our savior. This is every man’s short lesson of life, and he that has well learned it, is scholar enough, and has had all the benefit of a most finished education.
Let me tell you, that as here lies all the true and real freedom, which cannot be taken from you, so in the constant exercise of this freedom, that is, in a continual leaving yourself to, and depending upon the operation of God in your soul, lies all your road to heaven. No divine virtue can be had any other way.
It matters not what our evils are… hardness of heart, covetousness, wrath, pride, and ambition, etc., our remedy is always one and the same, always at hand, always certain and infallible.
Begin to search and dig in your own field for this pearl of eternity… and when you have found it you will know that all which you have sold or given away for it is as mere a nothing as a bubble upon the water.
It is always with us, but there must be an opening of the heart to it, and though it is always there, yet it is only felt and found by those who are attentive to it, depend upon, and humbly wait for it.
He need go nowhere, because wherever he is, that which is to save him, and that which he is to be saved from, is always with him.
Our salvation consists wholly in being saved from ourselves.
What a light is here for those that can bear or love the light!
All things must be set right in yourself first, before you can rightly assist others towards the attaining to the same state.
No one can see these truths in the manner that I have presented them, without being in some degree inclined to believe them, and in some degree stirred up to act in conformity to them.
Who has not at one time or other felt a sourness, wrath, selfishness, envy and pride, which he could not tell what to do with, or how to bear, rising up in him without his consent, casting a blackness over all his thoughts, and then as suddenly going off again, either by the cheerfulness of the sun or air, or some agreeable accident, and again, at times, as suddenly returning upon him? Sufficient indications are these to every man that there is a dark guest within him… often lulled to sleep by worldly light and amusements.
For the outward world is but a glass, a representation of the inward; and everything, and variety of things in temporal nature, must have its root or hidden cause in something that is more inward.
The spiritual life is as much its own proof as the natural life, and needs no outward or foreign thing to bear witness to it.
I appeal to nothing but the state of your own hearts and consciences, to prove the necessity of your embracing this mystery of divine love.
These are not fictions of a visionary imagination, but sober truths, spoken by the word of God in scripture, and written and engraven in the book of every man’s own nature.
I am quite my own master, agreeably lodged, perfectly easy in my circumstances. I am contented with my situation, and happy because I think myself so.
