This is an awful state for any to be in at present; but, blest be God, it is not yet a hopeless situation.  Let no person say, “I find by what I have heard, that I do not love God, and therefore I can entertain no hope.”  There is a way of return and recovery open to all.  Jesus Christ, my dear brethren, proclaims to you all, “I am the way.  No man can come to the Father but by me":—­but every one that will may come by this new and living way; and, if you lose life eternal, you lose it because—­according to his words just before the text—­because “you will not come to Christ that you may have life.”  If you feel the misery, deformity, and danger of your state, then listen to His invitation, and embrace His promise.  See the whole weight of your guilt transferred to His cross!  See how God can be at once the just and the justifier!  Take of the blood of sprinkling, and be at peace!  His blood cleanseth from all sin:  He will send that Spirit into your heart which will manifest Him to you; and where that Spirit is, there is liberty and holy love.  He is the mystical ladder, let down from heaven to earth, on which angels are continually ascending and descending, in token of an alliance established between God and man.  United by faith to Jesus Christ, you shall become a habitation of God through the Spirit; the Father will make you a partaker of His love, the Son of His grace, angels of their friendship; and you shall be preserved, and progressively sanctified, until, by the last change, all remains of the great epidemic source of evils shall be forever removed from your soul; and the love of God shall constitute your eternal felicity.

EVANS

THE FALL AND RECOVERY OF MAN

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Christmas Evans, a Welsh Baptist preacher, was born at Isgaerwen, Cardiganshire, South Wales, in 1766.  Brought up as a Presbyterian, he turned Baptist in 1788, and was ordained the following year and ministered among the Baptists in Carmaerthenshire.  In 1792 he became a sort of bishop to those of his denomination in Anglesey, where he took up his residence.  After a somewhat stormy experience with those he undertook to rule, he removed to Carmaerthen in 1832.  He distinguished himself by his debt-raising tours, in which his eloquence brought him much success.  It is said that once when he was preaching on the subject of the prodigal son, he pointed to a distant mountain as he described the father seeing him while yet a great way off, whereupon thousands in his congregation turned their heads in evident expectation of seeing the son actually coming down the hills.  He died in 1838.

EVANS

1766—­1838

THE FALL AND RECOVERY OF MAN

For if, through the offense of one, many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.—­Romans v., 15.