1.  Dost thou ask at Me why I and My Father have seen it good to allow the dregs of thy sinfulness still to corrupt and to rot in thine heart?  Dost thou ask why, amid so much in thee that is regenerate, there is still so much more that is unregenerate?  Why, while thou art, without controversy, under grace, indwelling sin still so festers and so breaks out in thee?  Dost thou ask that?  Then, attend, and before I go away to come again I will try to tell thee, if, indeed, thou art able and willing to bear it.  Well, then, be silent while I tell thee that I have left all that of thy original sin in thee to tempt thee, to try thee, to humble thee, and to thrust, day and night, upon thee, what is still in thine heart.  To humble thee, take knowledge, take warning, and take forethought.  To make thee humble, and to keep thee humble.  To hide pride from thee, and to lay thee all thy days on earth in the dust of death.  I tell thee this day that in all thy past life I have ordered and administered all My providences toward thee to humble thee and to prove thee, and to make thee dust and ashes in thine own eyes.  And I go away to carry on from heaven this same intention of My Father’s and Mine toward thee.  We shall try thee as silver is tried.  We shall sift thee as wheat is sifted.  We shall search thee as Jerusalem is searched with lighted candles.  I tell thee the truth, I shall bend from heaven all My power which My Father has given Me, and all My wisdom, and all My love, and all My grace.  What to do, dost thou think?  What to do but to make thee to know and to acknowledge the plague of thine own heart.  The deceitfulness, that is, the depth of wickedness, and the abominableness, past all words, of thine own heart.  I do not ascend to My Father, with all things in My hand, to make thy seat soft, and thy cup sweet, and thy name great, and thy seed multiplied.  I have far other predestinations before Me for thee.  I have loved thee with an everlasting love, and it is to everlasting life that I am leading thee.  And thou must let Me lead thee through fire and through water if I am to lead thee to heaven at last.  I shall have to utterly kill all self-love out of thy heart, and to plant all humility in its place.  Many and dreadful discoveries shall I have to make to thee of thy profane and inhuman self-love and selfishness.  Words will fail thee to confess all thy selfishness in thy most penitent prayer.  Thy towering pride of heart also, and thy so contemptible vanity.  As for thy vanity, I shall so overrule it that double-minded men about thee shall make thee and thy vanity their sport, their jest, and their prey.  And I shall not leave thee, nor discharge Myself of My work within thee, till I see thee loathing thyself and hating thyself and gnashing thy teeth at thyself for thy envy of thy brother, thy envy concerning his house, his wife and his man-servant, and his maid-servant, and his ox, and his ass, and everything that is his.