Out of the Deep | Page 9

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, [Greek text], 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, [Greek text], 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