“The merits of Christ, exclusive of any thing of ours, are the sole foundation of our hope.  Christ is set forth, in Scripture, as the atonement, the propitiation for sins, the one sacrifice for sin; Christ is the end of the law for righteousness; all is made ours by free gift. 1 John, 5:11.  All is ready, justice satisfied, God reconciled, peace proclaimed.  But what is all this to a thoughtless world, insensible of their situation, danger, and need?  It is an awful saying, but it is of the Holy Ghost, If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded their minds, and darkened their understandings, and hardened their hearts, etc.  Therefore the application of this grace is also of God; it is all within his plan; he has appointed means, and commanded our diligence in the use of them.  We have his Bible in our hands, his ministers in our churches, who are also pastors and teachers if we apply for their aid in private; we have a throne of grace to go to, and many great and precious promises held up in God’s word for us to embrace and plead for Christ’s sake:  we have many prayers in the Scriptures which we may adopt.

“I acknowledge we are all still dependent for the effect; that must be from God himself.  But he does honor his own ordinances.  He puts forth his power, and convinces of sin; this is his first work.  The soul is awakened, aroused, convinced of sin and misery; sins of the heart, sins of the tongue, sins of the life, press upon the conscience which never disturbed us before; misspent time, wasted talents, lost opportunities, neglect of God’s word and ordinances, so that the soul cannot rest.  O, my Juliet, this is a hopeful case.  I hope you have experienced something of this.  It is one of the surest marks of the operation of the Spirit of God, and a prelude to the new birth.  It never takes place without it, for the whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.  Only the weary and heavy laden will prize rest, and Christ is the rest they need; only a convinced sinner will or can prize the Saviour, and now the Lord opens his mind to understand the Scriptures.  He sees the provision which God has made for ruined sinners, by providing a substitute to stand in his room; he perceives how God can be just and justify the sinner who takes shelter in Jesus; he falls in with God’s gracious plan:  receives the Lord Jesus as God’s gift to sinners; trusts entirely in his merits for pardon, peace, reconciliation, and eternal life; resigns his soul into the hands of his Saviour, in the faith that he will save it, and devotes himself unreservedly to his service, in the faith that he will give him grace to live to him in all holy obedience.  Now, and not till now, according to God’s promise, he receives power to become his child; this is God’s order, John 1:12.  Now he receives life and begins to live; but there is yet a great work before him.  It hath pleased God in his plan to finish at once a justifying righteousness; it is his own work, and was finished in that awful hour when he announced it in his last words on the cross.  John 19:30.  To this nothing of ours is to be added, with this nothing of ours mixed; it is for ever perfect, it is God’s gift made ours in the hour when we first believe, receive it, rest our souls upon it.