Is any one disposed to ask, " How can these things be?" " How is it that God will manifest himself to his people, and not unto the world ? " This is the very question which one of the Apostles put to our Lord ; who, in reply, confirmed the truth he had asserted ; saying, " If any man love me, he will keep my words : and my Father will love him ; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him'^."]
2. '^ He will save those that be of a contrite spirit" —
[Many are their fears in relation to their final happiness : but " God will never suffer so much as one of his little ones to perish." The contrite in particular he will save: for " he looketh upon men ; and if any say, I have sinned, and per- verted that which was right, and it profited me not ; he will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the lights" Their tenijitatmis may be many; but " He will not suffer them to be tempted above that they are able ; but will with the temptation make also for them a way to escape, that they may be able to bear it™." However nume- rous or potent their enemies may be, " he will deliver them out of the hands of all"," and " make them more than conquerors over all°." In a word, " He will save them with an everlasting salvation; nor shall they be ashamed or confounded world without end P."]
But the text leads me rather to shew you,
III. What present encouragement the very existence of it affords to those in whom it is found — The contrition which has been before described is the fruit and effect of God's love to the soul —
[" The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." There is no work of divine grace more difficult than this. The taking away of the stony heart, and the giving a heart of flesh, is a new creation ; and discovers as clearly the operation of Omni- potence as the universe itself. It is the very beginning of salvation in the soul. A person under a deep sense of sin is apt to imagine that God will not have mercy upon him : but his very contrition is a proof and evidence that God has aheady imparted to him his grace. What a reviving consi- deration is this to the humble penitent ! God is nigh thee : he is in the very act of saving thee. Why, then, art thou cast down? Why art thou " saying. The Lord hath forsaken and forgotten me ? " Does the greatness of thy guilt appal thee ?
k John xiv. 21—23. • Job xxxiii. 24, 27, 28.
« 1 Cor. X. 13. " Luke i. 74.
" Rom. viii. 37. p Isai. xlv. 17.