Only, only, if you be wandering from your Father’s house, come home; if you be wrong, entreat to be made right.  If you are in your Father’s house, stay there; if you are right, pray and struggle to keep right; if the old account is blotted out, then, for your soul’s sake, run up no fresh account to stand against you after all in the Day of Judgment; if you have the hope in you of not coming to shame, you must purify yourselves, even as God is pure; if you believe really with your heart, you must believe unto righteousness; that is, you must trust God to make you righteous and good:  there is no use trusting Him to make you anything else, for He will make you nothing else; being good Himself, He will only make you good:  but as for trusting in Him to leave you bad, to leave you quiet in your sins, and then to save you after all, that is trusting that God will do a most unjust, and what is more, a most cruel thing to you; that is trusting God to do the Devil’s work; that is a blasphemous false trust, which will be utterly confounded in the Day of Judgment, and will cover you with double shame.  The whole question for each of us is, ‘Do we believe unto righteousness?’ Is righteousness what we want?  Is to be made good men what we want?  If not, no confessing with the mouth will be unto salvation, for how can a man be saved in his sins?  If an animal is diseased can it be saved from dying without curing the disease?  If a tree be decayed, can it be saved from dying without curing the decay?  If a man be bad and sinful, can he be saved from eternal death without curing his badness and sinfulness?  How can a man be saved from his sins but by becoming sinless?  As well ask, Can a man be saved from his sins without being saved from his sins?  But if you wish really to be saved from your sins, and taken out of them, and cured of them, that you may be made good men, righteous men, useful men, just men, loving men, Godlike men;—­then trust in God for that, and you will find that your trust will be unto righteousness, for you will become righteous men; and confess God with your mouth for that, saying, ’I believe in God my Father; I believe in Jesus Christ His Son, who died, and rose, and ascended on high for me; I believe in God’s Holy Spirit, which is with me, to make me right;’ and your confession will be unto salvation, for you will be saved from your sins.

Always say to yourself this one thing, ’Good I will become, whatever it cost me; and in God’s goodness I trust to make me good, for I am sure He wishes to see me good, more than I do myself; and you will find that because you have confessed, in that best and most honest of ways, that God is good, and have so given Him real glory, and real honour, and real praise, He will save you from the sins which torment you:  and that because you have really trusted in Him, you shall never come, either in this world, or the world to come, to that worst misery, the being ashamed of yourself.