7.  ’All these grants, privileges, and immunities I bestow upon thee; upon thee, I say, and upon thy right seed after thee.’  O Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, give us such a seed!  Give us a seed right with Thee!  Smite us and our house with everlasting barrenness rather than that our seed should not be right with Thee.  O God, give us our children.  Give us our children.  A second time, and by a far better birth, give us our children to be beside us in Thy holy Covenant.  For it had been better we had never been born; it had been better we had never been betrothed; it had been better we had sat all our days solitary unless all our children are to be right with Thee.  Let the day perish, and the night wherein it was said, There is a man-child conceived.  Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above; neither let the light shine upon it, unless all our house is yet to be right with God.  O my son Absalom!  My son, my son Absalom!  Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!  But thou, O God, art Thyself a Father, and thus hast in Thyself a Father’s heart.  Hear us, then, for our children, O our Father, for such of our children as are not yet right with Thee!  In season and out of season; we shall not go up into our bed; we shall not give sleep to our eyes nor slumber to our eyelids till we and all our seed are right with Thee.  And then how we and all our saved seed beside us shall praise Thee and bless Thee above all the families on earth or in heaven, and shall say:  Unto Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath bestowed upon us a free, full, and everlasting forgiveness, and hath made us partakers of His Divine Nature, to Him be our love and praise and service to all eternity.  Amen and Amen!

CHAPTER XXVIII—­EMMANUEL’S LAST CHARGE TO MANSOUL:  CONCERNING THE REMAINDERS OF SIN IN THE REGENERATE

   ’Hold fast till I come.’—­Our Lord.

There are many fine things in Emmanuel’s last charge to Mansoul, but by far the best thing is the answer that He Himself there supplies to this deep and difficult question,—­to this question, namely, Why original sin is still left to rage in the truly regenerate?  Why does our Lord not wholly extirpate sin in our regeneration?  What can His reason be for leaving their original sin to dwell in His best saints till the day of their death?  For, to use His own sad words about sin in His last charge, nothing hurts us but sin.  Nothing defiles and debases us but sin.  Why, then, does He not take our sin clean out of us at once?  He could speak the word of complete deliverance if He only would.  Why, then, does He not speak that word?  That has been a mystery and a grief to all God’s saints ever since sanctification began to be.  And the great interest and the great value of Emmanuel’s last charge to Mansoul stands in this, that He here tells us, if not all, then at least some of His reasons for the policy He pursues with us in our sanctification.  Dost thou know, He asks, as He stands on His chariot steps, surrounded with His captains on the right hand and the left—­Dost thou know why I at first did, and do still, suffer sin to live and dwell and harbour in thy heart?  And then, after an O yes! for silence, the Prince began and thus proceeded: