The Bible tells us that “in the beginning God made man upright,” that he created him in his own image, after his own likeness, and pronounced him, with all else that he had made, “very good.”  But how is man now?  What is his moral and spiritual condition?  I appeal to the heart experience of every one in this house for an answer.  Brother, there is no charge on the part of the church against you.  The church has never at any time preferred a charge against you.  You are loved and held in high esteem by all the brethren and sisters.  The laws of your land have never brought an accusation against you.  You have, in the most minute particulars, been “a law-abiding citizen.”  More than all this, you labor to do all the good you can, by feeding and clothing the poor; by helping to keep up the church, and by aiding in the spread of the Gospel.  You also help your neighborhood, county and State by paying all your dues and by voluntary contributions of money or labor to public improvements, education and whatever else may be for the general good, as necessity may demand.

But, with all these excellencies in your character and life in full view, I ask you, as in the presence of God:  Do you feel in your heart that you are a good man?  Would you be willing for the world and the church to know every thought and imagination and desire that enters your heart and passes through your mind in the short space of one day of your life?  Do you feel that all within is fit for the eye of God?  I know, or think I know, just what is in your mind, and your answer is in words like these:  “I do not feel that I am good.  It is only by constant watchfulness, by looking to Jesus in his Word, and by reading his Word with prayer, in connection with my attendance upon the ordinances of his house, that I am enabled to walk in the path I go, and lead the life I do.

  “’He LEADETH me:  HE leadeth me: 
  By his own hand he leadeth me.’

“His promise, ’Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,’ sustains my hope and assures me that ’he will never leave me, nor forsake me.’  Thus, God being my helper, I do all the good I can, and shun the evil.  In this way ’I labor, whether at home or absent, to be well-pleasing to him; and work out my own salvation with fear and trembling;’ feeling, however, at the same time, a blessed assurance that it is God who worketh in me both to will and to do the things that are pleasing in his sight.”

Brethren, this is salvation.  It is the sum of “the things which many prophets and wise men desired to see, and saw them not; and to hear, and heard them not.”  But let us look at the divine forces, brother, that have wrought in you this wonderful change from a life of self-love, into which you were born by nature, to a life of divine love, joyful, holy, heavenly love to God and your brother, into which you have been born by the Spirit.