FIRST THINGS.
by Gardiner Spring
Volume I — Chapter 1

GOD HIMSELF BEFORE ALL THINGS.

It is not the object of the writer to address himself to the popular taste, at the sacrifice of truth. So far from this, the following pages will, he trusts, be found to contain God’s truth, presented in the plainest dress.

He has assumed the title, FIRST THINGS, because his topics are among the first lessons narrated in the Sacred Writings, the first great realities revealed to men.
Of these the adorable and ever-blessed God has the first place. In every view he has the preeminence.

By the great word GOD, the Scriptures mean that intelligent, eternal First Cause, who created, upholds, and governs all things. We open the sacred pages, and the first words we read are these: “IN THE BEGINNING, GOD.”

Most of the ancient schools and systems of Pagan philosophy, if not atheistical, were atheistic in their tendency, and in their results showed themselves most successful abettors of atheism. Theoretical atheists are few; yet men still live without God in the world. They speculate coldly on the existence of Him who has existed forever; they reason without emotion of him who is himself the source of all they enjoy and all they admire; they speak with marvellous indifference of him, in whose hand their breath is, and whose are all their ways. They have no affecting impression of his glorious and amiable nature; every thrilling view of God they banish; they feel as if there were no God, and conduct themselves as though He, under whose inspection all their conduct and all their thoughts are naked and open, and who himself has an interest in all they do and are, had no concern with them, nor they with him.

The weighty truth can never be stricken out of existence, that there is a God; that he exists independently of every being in the universe, and that he is infinitely above the reach of creatures. The denial of this truth is so palpable an absurdity, that it is no marvel that it has the consent of all nations, and that the belief of it is so universally prevalent. Human consciousness does not more certainly attest the existence of a world within us, nor the human senses more certainly the existence of the world without us, than human reason receives it as an ultimate fact, that these internal and external worlds could not exist without an adequate cause. God’s eternal existence is a necessary truth; if other things exist, it is inconceivable, impossible, that he should not exist.

Yet, obvious as it is, this is a most exalted idea of God. When he revealed himself to Moses, he made the disclosure in the memorable words, I AM THAT I AM. This is “his name;” this is the impression which he himself has of his own Being. It is without beginning and without end; it has no distinction of parts; what it now is, it always was; what it now is, it always will be. We cannot convey any true idea of what it is; “who by searching can find out God? It belongs to creatures to begin to live; to the uncreated One, to live always. And this is the first thought by which we would illustrate the truth that God himself is before all things. “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” “Thou art the same, and of thy years there is no end.” “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come.”

In the next place, God is before all things in the excellencies of his nature These can no more be comprehended by creatures than the eternity of his existence. “Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out.” “It is high as heaven, what canst thou do: deeper than hell, what canst thou know: the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.” After the clearest and most extended view of his greatness and majesty,—his spirituality and unchangeableness,—his immensity and infinity,—omnipotence and omniscience,—his blessedness and his goodness,—his compassion and faithfulness,—his holiness and justice,—his impartiality and sovereignty,—his truth and mercy,—his love and anger; we are constrained to say, “Lo, these are parts of his ways, but how little a portion is heard of him.” Our largest and holiest contemplations of his nature leave us insensible of what he is, and almost senseless to his unutterable glory. Our thoughts of him are like shadows; they are the emptiness, the vacancy of thought, as it would fain travel over that shoreless ocean, and as it loses itself in thinking of him who is all and in all, and above all, and over all, God blessed forever. Angels and men have been for centuries employed in contemplating the infinity of his perfections; and though their knowledge of him, and their admiration of his excellence have been continually increasing, and with every new inspection of his works and his word, they have learned something new of him; yet have they never reached the lofty position from which they can survey his fulness, nor have their minds ever been able to take in the full revelations of his nature which he himself has made. O, we are confounded when we think of God. He is “the King eternal, immortal, and invisible;” the “blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. “Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty.” Thought, which measures other things, cannot measure the infinite Deity; reason, which penetrates other things, cannot dive into this unsearchable abyss; imagination has no colors by which it can depict him who makes the clouds his chariot, and who dwelleth in light that is inaccessible and full of glory. And faith itself, while it gives his testimony entire and implicit confidence, confessedly believes concerning him what it does not comprehend. Bright excellencies there are in God which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the mind of man or seraph. Seraphim do indeed behold him face to face; while they are never more sensible than in their clearest visions of his glory, that there are brighter and still more bright manifestations; and even in view of those that are the more dim and obscure, they cover their faces with their wings. The immensity of God, what is it? the infinity of greatness and goodness, who can comprehend them but his infinite Mind in whom they dwell? Goodness there is in creatures, and greatness, which excite our admiration; but they are borrowed rays from this uncreated sun; no more than floating atoms within his illimitable power and wisdom, his boundless rectitude and love. “All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him as less than nothing and vanity.” “Behold, he putteth no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly.” Who shall “not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name, for thou only art holy; for all nations shall come and worship before thee.”

God is also before all things, in the claims which he has upon his creatures. He is of right the lawgiver of the universe; while, in the administration of his government, he doeth according to his will in the armies of heaven, and amid all the inhabitants of the earth. His being and his nature give him this supremacy. In searching for the foundation of moral obligation, we may not push our inquiries beyond the divine existence and the divine nature. It is not without reason that we speak of the eternal and immutable difference between right and wrong; and of the foundations of obligation as existing in the nature of things. But the greatest of all things is God. His law is what it is, because he himself is God. God himself must cease to be what he is, and his intelligent creatures must cease to be what they are, before his claims may hold a secondary place.

What are these claims? Summarily expressed, they are contained in the few words, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” True religion begins here, with angels and with men, in heaven and on earth. It has peculiarities in the world that is fallen and redeemed, and some shining graces that are unknown to the unfallen; while the elements of these are the same which constitute the character of those who have never sinned, and “have no need of repentance.” And what do these claims imply, but that all men should know God, acknowledge him, and from the heart serve and honor him?

Him they must know. Ignorance and false views of his character may be, and often are, alike fatal to piety. They not only shroud the mind in darkness, but lead multitudes blindfold to perdition. Nature and providence speak for God; but there are lessons which they do not, cannot read to us. Do we search for views of him that will not mislead our minds; for some strong and express image of the invisible Deity? That great mystery of godliness, “God manifest in the flesh,” was God himself dwelling among men, imprinting his foot-steps on this low earth, and holding intercourse with mortals as a man with his friend. What he was, that God is; Immanuel, “God with us,” in all his spotless purity and rectitude, in his attractive loveliness and overawing majesty; “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” In his last and memorable prayer with and for his disciples, he utters the language, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”

God claims to be acknowledged as well as known. He requires an honest and frank avowal of his excellence and prerogative. Where men are brought into collision with idol temples and idol deities; or where, in less degraded lands, fame, pleasure and power set up their altars; where a forgotten God, a slighted Saviour, an unsought Sanctifier proclaim that there are thousands who have other gods before him; where thousands more make a God of self and gold, and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator: it is characteristic of those who serve and honor him, never to be ashamed of him, his truth, or his cause; and while they confess him with their mouths, to inscribe the acknowledgment on the fleshly table of their hearts, “This God is our God forever and ever; he will be our guide even unto death.”

His claims thus reach the inner man. It is this internal homage which we owe, and on which he insists. “My son, give me thy heart.” Our hearts must be his—so loving, fearing, trusting and rejoicing in him, that we live to praise him, and find our pleasure in doing his will. His being must influence us; all his attributes must influence us; his providence must influence us, as well as his grace and truth. Our time must be his; our labor his; his our property and influence; his our waking, and his our hours of rest; our home his, his our joys, our sorrows; our life his, and his our death. Living and dying, we must be the Lord’s. He will have all, if his claims are duly honored.

And the thought may not be lost sight of that he must have this supremacy in opposition to all other claims. There are claims which do not interfere with his; he appoints and honors them, and they are identified with his own. The world has claims, business and friendship have claims, science has claims, and every department of human effort and joy that is honest, true, temperate, pure, and of good report, has claims which he honors. But they must all be subordinate to him; we must turn from every altar to his. No danger may repress, no toil discourage, no external influence subdue this paramount regard to God. No traditions of men may countervail his word; no confessor stand in his place; no sanctuary be set up against his. It is only at his footstool that true devotion kneels.

God also is before all things, in that his honor and glory should be the first and great object of our pursuit. When we look into the sacred writings, we find such declarations as these: “The Lord hath made all things for himself.”—“I have created him for my glory.”—“I wrought for my name’s sake that it should not be polluted before the heathen.”—“All things were created by him and for him.”—“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they do exist, and were created.”—“Whether therefore ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.” We deduce from these and such like declarations, the great truth that God himself is his own great end, and that in all that they do, his creatures should aim to please and honor him. This is his supreme object, and it must be theirs. The supreme and ultimate reason of every created object in the universe is in God himself. What is this material universe, but an expression of his power? the utterance of the Deity as it awoke this universe of matter into being? And when we behold it clothed with verdure, and filled with ten thousand forms of organic life, everywhere displaying its form and beauty; what are these but expressions of his wisdom? And when, in addition to these, we see the myriads of animated and living existences, fitted for life and enjoyment and utility; what are these but expressions of his goodness? And when, to crown the work of his hands, we see a race of thinking, moral, and immortal beings; what do these express but the manifold perfections of their great Author, and what were they made for, if not to show forth his praise? And when we contemplate our race, all the subjects of the divine government; what lesson do they so certainly and emphatically teach us, as the divine authority and control? And when we further contemplate man fallen, man redeemed, man glorified; what do these great and marvellous events so effectually secure as the manifestation of that holiness, justice, mercy, sovereignty, and boundless all-sufficiency of the Godhead, which, without these events, never could have shone forth, and only remained in their original and undiscovered radiance around the throne of the solitary Deity? God would still have been as spiritual, as powerful, as wise, as good, as holy, as just, as gracious and all-sufficient as he is now; but these glorious and burning perfections, which give rise to all the knowledge, holiness, and blessedness of angels and men, and which sustain and are progressively augmenting them all, would have been silent and retired. There would have been no such emphatic utterances of them, no such view of them, as that, “beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” creatures themselves might be “changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” No being in the universe occupies this high eminence but God; he is the Alpha and the Omega; in this he is before all others, and all creatures are but as a drop of a bucket compared with him. Not more certainly was the earth formed for the residence of man, than man was formed for God. Not more certainly were the vapors formed to become condensed in clouds, and the clouds to water the earth, and the rivers to run into the sea, than man was formed for God. Not more certainly was the sun made to shine, and the trees to bear fruit, than man was made for God. It is the great law of man’s being, and his chief end to glorify God and enjoy him forever. For this great purpose he was made; and when the fact is demonstrated that he no longer lives to praise, and glorify, and enjoy God, it were better that he did not live. He violates the law of his creation; he does what he can to frustrate the end of his existence; and better were it for him and for the universe where he dwells, that he go back to his original dust. And thither would his Creator remand him, if he were not able to “make the wrath of man praise him,” and extort from his folly and wickedness some reluctant tribute.

It is a great thought, that, in this as well as every other respect, God is before all things. We cannot measure it, much less can we utter it. We have a place on this earth more for the purpose of taking a view of this great and glorious Deity, of living to honor him, of so conducting ourselves as to make him appear glorious, excellent, and amiable in the view of our fellow-men, than for any other purpose. We may not aim at a lower end than this: a higher we cannot aim at, nor at one more comprehensive and more controlling. How great the privilege of being permitted to honor One so great, so lovely; One, of whom everything that is venerable in greatness and attractive in goodness in the created universe, is but the faint reflection; One whom holy angels venerate and honor, whom holy men have lived and died to glorify, and in whose faultless character wicked men on earth and devils in hell have been able to find no blemish.

God is also pre-eminently above all others, as the source of blessedness. Man is a spiritual and immortal being. He must have joys that are spiritual and immortal; nor does he find them except in God. Those regions of thought and affection where created minds find such rich banquets, were all delineated and mapped out by his hand and heart of love. There is not an emotion in the human mind that makes man wiser, better, or more happy, and that finds such rich and ever-diversified aliment in the contemplation of him and his truth, but is the fruit of his Spirit. It is no abstract theory, no speculation of an abstruse, or sentimental, or transcendental philosophy, that the ever-blessed God is himself as truly the source of blessedness and joy to the soul, as the sun is the source of light and gladness to the otherwise dark and withered creation. There is that in the divine nature, so full-orbed and complete, so glorious in holiness, that the most intense thought, the most ardent affection and desire, the most delighted gratitude, the deepest reverence, the highest admiration, find their ever-increasing and ever-glowing ardor fed at his altars. Such is the Christian’s experience, that, when he would be happy, he turns immediately, I had almost said instinctively, to God as his highest good. He has proved the deceitfulness of other confidences, and makes God his refuge; he has tried to find tranquillity elsewhere, but he returns to God as his rest; and even when he has drank deep at other fountains, he can say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none on the earth that I desire beside thee!” He loves God and finds his heart gratified; he flees to him, and feels safe; he looks to him in embarrassment, and knows that he will “guide him by his counsel.” And when he comes to the last conflict, and there are no sublunary lights to shine upon the dark valley, and no created power to help him as he grapples with the king of terrors; God himself is his “glory and the lifter up of his head.” I AM THAT I AM— God’s all-sufficiency is his blessedness. It is not the presumption of blind adventurousness that makes him confident; nor the fortitude of insensibility that makes him strong, when unassisted by earth he engages manfully in the great battle with “this last enemy,” and “through him that hath loved him,” comes off conqueror. It is God alone speaking to the soul in its loneliness, and the thinking spirit uttering its responses, and receiving in return the full promise, “I will never leave thee, never forsake thee.” If we would know what it is to be cheered and comforted by the divine presence and love, we may try to think what it is for a creature of thought and sensitiveness to be abandoned of God; separated from the good, separated from the holy, eternally separated from all blessedness and joy. If we search for the two extremes of misery and happiness in the universe, we shall find them, on the one hand, in the soul that is most shut out from God’s blessedness; and on the other, in the soul that is permitted to dwell nearest his throne. Could we know the joys of the pure seraph who has never wandered from his presence, or of the ransomed sinner who occupies a place nearest his feet we should know that “in his presence is fulness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures for evermore.”

In the eternity of his being, in the excellence of his nature, in the prerogatives of his throne, in the chief and ultimate end of man’s being, and as the source of all blessedness, God himself therefore, is before all things.

Can these high claims be vindicated, and does he deserve his exalted preeminence? We devote a few remaining pages to this inquiry. And we do this, not because we doubt his claims, nor because the inquiry casts any suspicion upon them; but because God himself invites us to inspect them—nay, to scrutinize them; well assured that the more they are inspected and scrutinized, the deeper will be our conviction that they deserve to be honored, and that we shall find our own highest holiness, and honor, and happiness in honoring him.

The first remark on this part of our discussion is, That God himself claims this preeminence in his word. It is the language of his law, that we shall “have no other gods before him;” that we shall “love him with all the heart, and all the understanding.” It is the language of his gospel, that if we give him not this preeminence, we shall be anathema. This is man’s rule of action; he has no other. This is God’s sovereign will, and it may not be disregarded. Yet absolute as it is, we are not justified in regarding it as his mere arbitrary will. He claims this universal preeminence; nor does he act contrary to reason, nor without reason in insisting upon the claim. He would have us acknowledge and honor him of choice, and in view of the motives which he sets before our minds. His character as God deserves this supremacy; his authority as God this submission. It is right that creatures should pay him this supreme regard, and always will be right. To insist on such claims would be preposterous and supremely selfish in any other being in the universe; it is not preposterous, nor is it selfishness in God, because he is worthy. Every principle of equity enforces this claim; to abate, or relax it, or allow it to be superseded, were just as absurd as that he should require men to hate that which is lovely, or love that which is hateful. If “there is none like him among the gods,” then ought he to have no rival in the affections of men; if he is the only sovereign, then none may challenge his authority; and if he is the First Fair, and the First Good, of no other may it be said, “Their rock is not as our Rock, his enemies themselves being judges.” Who may carry about with him the painful consciousness that he is a contemner, or neglecter of God, when he whose “eyes run to and fro throughout the earth to show himself strong on the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him,” knoweth his down-sitting and his uprising, and understandeth his thoughts afar off. Disguise this heart-idolatry as we will, his eye marks it. “If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands unto a strange God, shall not God search this out?” And what is our disregard of his equitable claim, but a virtual denial of his being, his dominion and glory, or such a dividing and sharing of them with others as moves him to jealousy? He will not hold such a man guiltless. Habits, and principles, and practices, which exalt themselves against God, or give him a subordinate place, ought, like idols of silver and gold, to be “cast to the moles and the bats;” they ought to find their habitation in “the clefts of the rocks, and in the holes of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.”

These are claims too, in the next place, which are adapted to man’s intellectual and moral nature. He is formed for them; he perceives them, he feels the reasonableness of them, and cannot throw of the obligation of yielding to them. The Bible not more certainly assumes the fact of God’s existence, and asserts his excellence and government, than it presupposes that man is the fit subject of this government. All its teachings proceed on the principle of accountableness in men, so long as they are not idiots. Men are greatly at fault in their reasonings up on this very plain subject. They would fain persuade themselves that they are not under obligation to give God the first place, because they have already given that place to another; because their carnal mind is at enmity with God and dead in sin; and because this state of moral feeling requires omnipotent grace in order to be subdued. But what sort of theology, and what sort of piety is that, which exempts a man from the obligation to do right, because he does wrong; which relieves him from the duty of having no other God than the living and true, because he sets up idols in his heart, and because he is so wedded to them, that they must be torn from his bosom? His excuse confounds him; he is condemned out of his own mouth. Nothing is more preposterous than such reasoning. If there be any force in it, no man is under obligation to be better than he is; and the worse he is, the less is he under obligation to be better. If there is any force in such reasoning, there is no such thing as sin in the world, because there is no obligation violated, let men be as bad as they will. Never let the truth be forgotten, that human obligation lies back both of human sinfulness and God’s imparted grace. “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” Give men understanding, and conscience, be they ever so perverted by iniquity, and there is no escape from this obligation. They are the fit subjects of God’s control; he speaks to them, and what he utters has a determinate meaning. It is understood; conscience feels its authority, and cannot set it aside. It will be a fearful thing for such a man if he goes to the judgment trusting in his refuges of lies. He had better have been numbered with the cattle upon the thousand hills; he had better have been a maniac; or “like the untimely birth of a woman, he had better never have seen the light.” The hail will sweep his refuges of lies away, and the waters will overflow his hiding-place. He will have an interview with the insulted Deity at that dread tribunal, and will be speechless.

Nor may we overlook the affecting relations which exist between God and man, giving, as they do, additional force to these divine claims. They are not abstract truths which we have been uttering; they are truths addressed to every man’s . conscience; the conscience of the reader must be the expositor of them.

God is your Maker. “Know ye not that the Lord he is God; it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” And shall these bodies, so “curiously and wonderfully framed,” not become his temple, but be prostituted to the service of other gods? Shall not these hands be employed for him, and these feet “run in the way of his commandments?“ Shall these eyes never behold his glory; and these lips, shall they not speak his praise? Shall these thoughts never think of him, and for him; and these sensations never feel for him; and these volitions never respond to the call of their Maker? Shall this heart, which never beats without his wonder-working power, never throb for him, and these warm affections of which he has made us capable, and which give rise to so many social joys, never glow with love, but to show how much others are loved more than him? Shall this immortality, with which he has invested the meanest and the most exalted of our race, be forever alienated from him, and become an eternal exile from his family and favor?

God is your preserver. In his hand your breath is, and in him are all your ways. It is he that maketh the outgoings of the morning and the evening to rejoice; that watches you by night, and by day throws around you the shield of his guardianship; that feeds you with the finest of the wheat, makes you suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock, and bears you as on eagles’ wings. And does such goodness originate no obligations of grateful acknowledgment and service; or may these mercies be perverted to his dishonor, these deliverances abused, and this forfeited life, so long preserved, never honestly devoted to him by whose visitation it is thus cared for?

God is your Father. He has loved you, and instructed you, and chastened you, and borne with you, and guided you with his eye, and carried you in his bosom. He has not left you to be an atheist, nor an infidel, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Pagan. He has reared you in his sanctuary, and given you a place near his altars. Every morning and every evening, you have heard his voice of love, and seen him going forth to direct the arrangements of his providence for your benefit. “If I be a father,” says he, “where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear?” It is no unreasonable, or unfilial duty, and no unreasonable, exacting service that he calls for: it is your own good he is consulting, when he would have you glorify and enjoy him forever.

And what is more than all, God is your Redeemer. From the bondage of sin, from all that is terrible in apprehension and agonizing in despair, from corroding guilt and dreadful wrath, from the sting of death and the curse of the law, he sent the Son of his love to rescue you, with a strong hand and a stretched-out, arm. When your feet were going down to death, and your steps took hold on hell, he kept you from falling, and snatched you from the pit of destruction. The Destroyer was commissioned to go though your coasts and smite the mother with her children, and lay the first-born low; but the blood of the Paschal Lamb was on your door-posts and on the lintels, and he did not come nigh your dwelling. The enraged foe was in hot pursuit after you; you were foiled and crushed; but this great Deliverer spoiled principalities and powers in order to save you harmless. He spoiled the grave, disappointed hell of its prey, brought hope to the hopeless; and now, with unutterable tenderness, he invites those who are the children of wrath to become the sons of God. And shall the ransomed slave not think of his Deliverer? Shall not the redeemed sinner instinctively say, “O Lord, I am thy servant; I am thy servant; thou hast loosed my bonds!”

In every view, therefore, God is before all things; and in every view he deserves this pre-eminence. The obligation thus to regard him is absolute; it is universal and everlasting. We have but to hold up this infinite Deity before the mind of the most benighted Pagan, and he is forever hound to give God this high place. There is no absolution from this bond; and there is no such thing as violating it without peril. It binds the highest and the lowest as truly as it bound Gabriel; as truly as it did the first man before his apostasy; as truly, and just as much as it did the Israelites, when those words were first promulgated, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” It has never been revoked; nor has its great Author ever said or done anything to lower this high standard of human thought and conduct, but the rather everything to elevate it and give it perpetuity.

Yet, in contemplating this single truth, well may we say, “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who shall stand?” There is not one of us but must lay his hand upon his month. There is not one of us who is not conscious that many a favorite idol has usurped the throne which belongs to God; and who is not constrained to confess that infinitely inferior claims have been allowed to jostle with the claims of the living Deity. We may well try ourselves by this standard, if it were only to learn how pure and searching it is, and how vile we ourselves are. One reason why multitudes remain so thoughtless in sin, and so unconcerned about their sours salvation, is that they make light of this great truth. They make light of God, and therefore they make light of his law; and because they make light of these, they make light of sin; and because they make light of sin, they make light of the great salvation. “I was alive,” says the apostle, “without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.” Sin revives then, and the sinner feels its power; the law utters its penalty, and he sees his danger; his strength withers, and his hopes die. He is condemned; the penalty is death; the day of execution is hastening on; nor is it any marvel that he looks round for some way of escape, and cries out, “What must I do to be saved?” It is no new thing for men to be sensible of their lost condition as sinners; and it is no surprising thing. Resist not these convictions, if the Spirit of God is thus striving with you. Do not stop them, though they make the world look dark, and though they hold your eyes waking.

There is forgiveness with God. There is hope. Yes, there is forgiveness with God that he may be feared. There is hope for the chief of sinners, because “the Son of Man came to seek and save that which is lost.” “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.” While he lives, and when he dies, this is the Christian’s glorying; and this too is his holiness; he lives to Christ and to Christ he dies. This, also, is his greatest joy. For while it is his greatest grief that he has done so little for Jesus Christ, it is his greatest joy that Jesus Christ has done so much for him.

The apostle once said, “I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.” This is the way in which God is enthroned in the heart; and it is this enthroning which constitutes the sum and substance of true religion. It is from this inward obedience, that all outward obedience flows. True morality originates in a supreme regard for God. Morality without, and not within, is a fiction—a dream. Sin began in turning from God; piety begins in turning to him. The point at which men turn to him is giving him the supremacy he claims. Whether the living and true God shall have this supremacy, or whether they give it to another, is the question on which their eternity is suspended. This is the great controversy between man and his Maker. You must yield this controversy, gentle reader; for you cannot help seeing that God is right and you are wrong. God cannot yield it; not because he is arbitrary and will not, but because he is right and may not. Truth is with him; error is with you. His is the rectitude; yours the sin. The throne is his; the footstool yours. You are a creature of yesterday; he is from everlasting. You are abject; he is before all things. Yours is the relenting, the penitence, the submission, the trusting confidence; his the forgiving love, the gracious acceptance, the free salvation.