We give thanks to God, therefore, brethren, for you all :
T. For those of you who have begun to manifest a concern for your souls —
Truly this is a just ground of thanksgiving to God — [Look at the world around you, and see how regardless
men are of their eternal interest They even put God
far from them ; saying, " We desire not the knowledge of thy
ways" Every thing occupies in their minds a higher
place than God
But we need not think of others. Look only at your own conduct, from your youth up, till the moment that God was pleased to open your eyes to a sense of your guilt and danger. See how little you cared for God, or for your own souls. Instead of living unto Him who died for you, even to the Lord Jesus Christ who bought you with his blood, you lived alto- gether to yourselves, and were, so to speak, " without God in
the world" It is possible that some few may have
known God, like Timothy, from their very childhood, and never experienced any remarkable change, whether of heart or life. But this is the lot of very few. The great mass of believers were once as manifestly alienated from God as the world around them still are. Compare, then, your present with your former state ; and say if there be not reason to bless and adore God for the change that has been wrought in you ]
We do then, and will, thank God through Jesus Christ in your behalf —
[The change has proceeded from God alone. It was he who first " opened }our heart to attend to the things which were spoken" in his blessed word. He quickened you from the dead; endued you with, I will not say new faculties, but certainly with new dispositions ; by means of which, you have been brought to hate the ways which you once followed, and
to seek the things which you once despised And it is
for Christ's sake that God has vouchsafed this great mercy, even for the sake of hiin who bought you with his blood, and
intercedes for you at the right hand of God Through
that Saviour, then, will I render thanks to God, and bless him for all that he has done for your souls. It may be that, at present, your attainments are but small. But God forbid that 1 should " despise the day of small things." It is true, also, that where the change is but small, and but recently experienced, we have not that confidence in your state which we feel in reference to more advanced Christians. But never- theless we rejoice, even as the angels in heaven do, at the