LAST night after you were gone, I read your letter, and thought of what you had told me with the greatest satisfaction. What reason have you to be thankful, that God should at so early a time of your life convince you of _sin_, and give you to _know_, that you have redemption through Christ! How might you have plunged into all the follies and vices of youth, and laid up a large stock for future and bitter repentance, had not the free and unbounded grace of God displayed its power in your soul! Oh continue earnestly to seek still more and more of the _fulness_ of Christ. Think not because you have had a sense of the _pardoning love_ of God, that you are to _rest here_: no, still seek for fresh evidences of his love to your soul; press forward with unwearied diligence towards the mark of the _high calling_ of God in Christ Jesus; seek and _strive_ to gain the _abiding witness_ of the _Spirit_; strive for that perfect renewal of heart by which you may say, “’Tis no more I that live, but Christ liveth _in me_.”――You tell me you was assaulted, some days after you had this dear sense of the mercies of God in Christ Jesus, with doubts and fears. Whenever you are attacked in this manner again, argue thus with yourself:――“This peace and joy which I felt, this sense of forgiveness _seemed_ to me to be the work of God upon my soul: but was it really so? Might not a warm imagination deceive me, or might not the great enemy of souls transform himself into an angel of light, in order to lull me into a fatal security? But have I not an infallible rule to judge by, whether this work was of God? What were the fruits it produced? Did I upon this grow more careless and remiss? Was my mind puffed up with spiritual pride? Did I allow myself liberties which before I was afraid to take?――Or did I, on the contrary, watch still more diligently against the most distant approaches of sin? Did I find increasing power over sins of the heart, as well as outward sin? Did I find in me a _still_ deeper sense of my own nothingness and the all-sufficiency of my Redeemer, and a large increase of the love of God and all mankind? If these were the happy fruits of this evidence, I have no cause to doubt this work _was certainly_ of God.”
In this manner, my dear, if you will examine yourself, begging the assistance of the blessed Spirit, to enable you to search every winding and turning of your heart, you can never be deceived, and will always be able by the shield of faith to repel all the fiery darts of the devil. I thank you for your affectionate prayer for me (may God return all those blessings double on your own head) and am,
_Your ever-affectionate friend_,
****
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I DID not expect to see my dear **** on Saturday, for the weather was so extremely bad, that I thought you would make the best of your way to ****. I have read your letter with great pleasure, and hope you will continue thus diligently to examine the state of your own mind: and that on every examination you will find an increase of that “treasure which never faileth.”――I rejoice that you have been happy enough to suffer reproach for the sake of Christ, and more especially for the grace given you to _suffer joyfully_. You may depend upon it that there is the same real distinction between Christians and the world now, that there was when our blessed Master said, “Because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” And how ought our hearts to exult with praise and thanksgiving, when we can say _we_ are _not_ of the _world_! What unspeakable happiness will it be for us to be found (when our Redeemer comes to judgment) among those who were not ashamed of him in this “adulterous and perverse generation!” Is any thing too much to suffer, when animated by the hopes of having these glorious words addressed to us, “Come ye blessed!”