344 DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND KEEPING them or kill themwith terrors.. We have not a king like Reho- boam, that will multiply our pressures, but one whose office it is to break our yokes, and loose our bonds, and set us free. When he was a preacher himself on earth, you may gather what doctrines he preachedby his text,,which he chose at one of his first public ser- mons ; which; as you may find in Luke iv. 18, 19., was this : " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he bath anointed me to preach thegospel to the poor; he bath sent me to heal the broken- hearted ; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." O, if a. poor, bruised, wounded soul had but heard this sermon from his Savior's ownmouth, what heart-meltings would it have caused! What pangs of love would it have raised inhim ! You would sure have believed then that the Lord i"s gracious, when "all (that heard him) bare him witness,and wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth ; " Luke iv. 22. I we ld desire no more for the comfort of such a soul, than to see such a sight, and feel such a feeling, as the poor penitent prodigal did, when he found himself in the arms of his fa- ther, and felt the kisses of his mouth, and was surprised so unex- pectedlywith such a torrent oflove. Thesoul that hathonce seen and felt this, would never, sure, have such hard and doubtful thoughts of God, except through ignorance they knew- not whose arms they were that thus embraced them, or whose voice it was that thus bespoke them ; or unless the remembrance of it were gone out of their minds. You see, then, what is God's own lan- guage to humbled penitents, and what is the method of his deal- ings with them; and such must be the language and dealing of his ministers: they must not wound when. Christ would heal; nor make sad the heart that Christ would comfort, and would not have made sad ;' Ezek. xiii. 22. But will this means serve turn, or must the same course be taken to remove the sorrows of the willfully disobedient? No: God takes another course himself, and prescribes another course to his ministers, and requires another course from the sinner him- self. But still remember who it is that I speak of: it is not the ordinary, unavoidable infirmities of the saints that I speakof; such as they cannot be rid of, though they fain would ; such as Paul speaks of, Rom. vii. 19. " The good that I would do, I do not ;" and " when I would do good, evil is present with me ; " and Gal. v. 17. " The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, &c., so that we can- not do the things we would." A true Christian would love God more perfectly, and delight in him more abundantly, and bring every thought in subjection to his will, and subdue the very rem- nants of carnal concupiscence that there should be no stirrings of
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