there is, if not assurance, yet a great encouragement; and the Scripture, which delights to carry encouragement to the highest pitch to those who are following God, allows of our saying of even these that they are God’s chosen.  It gives them, as it were, the title beforehand, to make them feel how doubly miserable it must be not only not to obtain it, but to forfeit it after it had been already ours.  So then, there are senses in which we may say that some are chosen now; although, strictly speaking, the term can by us be applied, in its full sense, to those only who are passed beyond the reach of evil.

Those, then, we may call chosen, who, having heard their call, have turned to obey it, and have gone on following it.  Those we may call chosen,—­I do not say chosen irrevocably, but chosen now; chosen so that we may be very thankful to God on their behalf, and they thankful for themselves,—­who, since their Confirmation, or since a period more remote, have kept God before their face, and tried to do His will.  Those are, in the same way, chosen, who having found in themselves the sin which did most easily beset them, have struggled with it, and wholly, or in a great measure, have overcome it.  Thus, they are chosen, who, having lived either in the frequent practice of selfish, extravagance, or of falsehood, or of idleness, or of excess in eating and drinking, have turned away from these things, and, for Christ’s sake, have renounced them.  They are chosen, I think, in yet a higher sense, who, having found their besetting sin to be, not so much any one particular fault, as a general ungodly carelessness, a lightness which for ever hindered them from serving God, have struggled with this most fatal enemy; and, even in youth, and health, and happiness, have learnt what it is to be sober-minded, what it is to think.  Now, such as these have, in a manner, entered into their inheritance; they are not merely called, but chosen.  God and spiritual things are not mere names to them, they are a reality.  Such persons have tasted of the promises; they have known the pleasure—­and what pleasure is comparable to it?—­of feeling the bonds of evil passion or evil habit unwound from about their spirit; they have learnt what is that glorious liberty of being able to abstain from the things which we condemn, to do the things which we approve.  They have felt true sense of power succeed to that of weakness.  It is a delightful thing, after a long illness, after long helplessness, when our legs have been unable to support our weight, when our arms could lift nothing, our hands grasp nothing, when it was an effort to raise our head from the pillow, and it tired us even to speak in a whisper,—­it is a delightful thing to feel every member restored to its proper strength; to find that exercise of limb, of voice, of body, which had been so long a pain, become now a source of perpetual pleasure.  This is delightful; it pays for many an hour of previous weakness.  But it is infinitely more delightful to feel the change from weakness to strength in our souls; to feel the languor of selfishness changed for the vigour of benevolence; to feel thought, hope, faith, love, which before were lying, as it were, in helplessness, now bounding in vigorous activity; to find the soul, which had been so long stretched as upon the sick bed of this earth, now able to stand upright, and looking and moving steadily towards heaven.