Well, then, what are you to do?  I reply:  “Yield yourselves to God;” “be subject to the Father of your spirit, and live.”  “Wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?  Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.  Incline your ear, and come unto me:  hear, and your soul shall live.”  Instead of being workers against, seek to be “workers together” with God in your own souls; to have His “work of faith and love,” and everything beautiful and holy, perfected in you.  Believe in Jesus Christ as the living Person who alone can and will save you, by pardoning your sins, and giving you His Spirit to make you like Himself.  Begin your work by assuming that God is working in you to will and do; and because you have Him, through His omnipotent Spirit, working in you, do not be as one who beats the air in aimless and profitless warfare, nor strive against nor grieve that Spirit, but through Him “work out your own salvation.”  In thus pleading with you, I feel that I myself am but working with God; for I can say with the apostle, “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us:  we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.  For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.  We then, as workers together with Him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.”

Put this question in another way:  Suppose you had met Jesus Christ when He was on earth; that you had listened to one of His appeals when He preached the gospel from city to city, and felt His eye looking at you as He spoke in His own name, and in the name of His Father, saying, “Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”—­“The Son of man hath come to seek that which is lost,” and the like; that you had witnessed the delight it gave Him to do good, and to find any one willing to receive His overflowing love, and the sorrow He endured when men would not believe in Him or trust Him, but preferred remaining without the blessing; and that you had accompanied Him during His ministry on earth, and studied His character from all you saw and heard,—­could the impression made upon you in such circumstances be thus expressed, “I believe that Thou carest not for me; that my well-doing or ill-doing are equally matters of indifference to Thee; and that there is no faith or love that Thou desirest to see accomplished in my soul?” Would you have dared to speak in anything like this strain of blasphemy to the holy Saviour had you met Him?  Or would you not have been overwhelmed by the conviction, that whether you yielded to His wishes or not, these wishes were clear and unquestionable—­that from His character as a man having fellowship with God, His work as the Saviour of sinners, His revealed will as Lord, nothing could be more certain than that He wished you personally to be holy and happy through faith in His name; and accordingly, that if you accepted His call, and His offer of power to be so, you were but working with Him; and that if you neglected both, you were certainly working against Him?