and beg that your whole souls may be so melted and poured into its mould, as to assume its every feature, and be formed into the perfect image of your God.]
2. Those who rest in a mere formal compliance with it —
[You cannot deceive that blessed Spirit whose province it is to search the heart and try the reins. He requires " truth in our inward parts :" he requires that your heart be right with him ; that you " walk in the Spirit," and " pray in the Spirit," and "live in the Spirit," and give yourselves up altogether to his godly motions. Do not therefore dissemble with him, lest he give you up to your own delusions, and seal you up in utter impenitence to the day of final retribution. Of those who held the truth in unrighteousness, we are told that he gave them up to a reprobate mind. I pray you, bring not upon yourselves this heaviest of all judgments : but to-day, while it is called to-day, surrender up yourselves entirely to his guidance, that he may "make you perfect in every good work, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight through Christ Jesus c."]
3. Those who are endeavouring to please him in all things —
[The day of redemption is near at hand. O blessed day, when all the remains of sin and sorrow shall be for ever banished from the soul ! Look forward to it ; and order your every action, word, and thought, in reference to it. Pray to the Holy Spirit to work yet more and more powerfully upon you, in order to prepare you for your appearance before the judgment-seat of Christ. Guard against any sloth in the ways of God, lest, like the Church of old, you cause him to suspend the communications of his loved. Pray to him to give you that white stone, which none but he who has it can appreciate, and which has on it the name written, which none but he who possesses it can read6. Then shall you already even now enjoy a foretaste of your heavenly inheritance, and in due season " have an abundant entrance ministered unto you into the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."]
" Heb. xiii. 20, 21. d Cant. v. 2—6. e Rev. ii. 17.
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