70 FORGIVENESS OF SIN. them l Did it interest them in the promises I Did not he wrath of God overtake them notwithstanding'? So it is with many daily ; they think their conviction is con- version, and that their sins are pardoned, because they have been troubled. But this is really a fruit of self-righteousness. For a soul to place the spring of its peace or comfort in any thing of its own, is to fall short of Christ. We must not only be justified, but glory in him also. Isaiah, 45 : '25. Men may make use of the evidence of their graces, but only as means to a farther end ; not as the rest of the soul in the least, for this deprives men's very humilia- tion of all gospel-humility. True humility consists more in believing than in being sensible of sin. In believing the soul truly empties and abases itself. A sense of sin may consist with an obstinate resolution to scramble for something upon the account of self-endeavors. 'Though an evangelical sense of sinbe a grace, yet it is not the uniting grace which interests us in Christ; it is not that which peculiarly and in its own nature ex- alts him. There is in this sense of sin that which is na- tural, and that which is spiritual. The former consists in sorrow, trouble, self-abasement, dejection, anxiety of mind : of these I may say, as the apostle of afflictions, they are not joyous, but grievous. In their own nature they are no more than the soul's retreat into itself, with an abhorrence of the objects of its sorrow and grief. 'To stop here is to sit down short of Christ, whether it be for life or consolation. Let there be no mistake. There can be no evangeli- cal sense of sin, and humiliation, where there is no union with Christ. Zech. 12 : 10. The sense of sin in itself, and in its own nature, is not availing. Christ is the only rest of our souls. In any thing, for any end or pur- pose to take up short of him, is to lose it. It is not enough that we be "prisoners of hope," but we must
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