Out of the Deep | Page 9

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 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