Put
your finger on it. Write it in cipher on the margin of your Bible. Would
the most liberal judgment be able to say of you that you have any fear
and trembling in the work of your salvation? If not, I am afraid there
must be some mistake somewhere. There must be great guilt somewhere. At
your parents' door, or at your minister's, or, if their hands are clean,
then at your own. Christ has made it plain to a proverb, and John Bunyan
has made it a nursery and a schoolboy story, that the way to heaven is
steep and narrow and lonely and perilous. And that, remember, not a few
of the first miles of the way, but all the way, and even through the dark
valley itself. 'Almost all that is said in the New Testament of men's
watching, giving earnest heed to themselves, running the race that is set
before them, striving and agonising, fighting, putting on the whole
armour of God, pressing forward, reaching forth, crying to God day and
night; I say, almost all that we have in the New Testament on these
subjects is spoken and directed to the saints. Where those things are
applied to sinners seeking salvation once, they are spoken of the saints'
prosecution of their salvation ten times' (Jonathan Edwards).
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