CHAPTER VII. Che Soul in Earnest, but not Converted. "Why haltest thou, deluded heart? Offered by Heaven's entreating voice? Nor strive to enter in in vain. "Strive to enter in at the strait gate; for many, I seek to enter in, and shall not be able."-LUKE Xiii. 24. say unto you, will The Saul in Earnest, but not Converted. Freeness of the gospel offer-Yet many do not close with it-The gospel addressed to Sinners-Men think it is addressed to believers-To penitents -An illustration-Other hinderances-The case of Simon Magus. In tracing the history of a soul in its transition from darkness to light, there is one stage at which we would linger for a little, as exhibiting by contrast the difference between the religion of God and that of man. Nothing can exceed the freeness with which the gospel beckons the sinner to the Saviour. In every form of anxious encouragement which could be devised, the invitations are conveyed. "Whosoever will"-" My voice is to the sons of man"-"All the ends of the earth "—" All that labour and are heavy laden"-these are some of the phrases by which the weary are invited to rest, the burdened to relief, and the sinful to pardon. Yet free and inviting as that language is, many are not encouraged. On the contrary, they continue dejected and downcast. The three days' blindness of Paul after his marvellous vision, is the emblem of such souls they grope like the blind for the wall. And why? Since the God of all grace has made the path so plain, and invited "whosoever will" to come, and to come as sinners, how does it happen that so many sinners are unsoothed and unhappy still? Because they interpose difficulties where the only wise God has removed them; they conjure up obstructions where he 76 MAN'S FORM OF THE GOSPEL. has made the path so plain, that "the wayfaring men, though fools, need not err.' وو Premising that all the fault of the sinner's delay is in the sinner himself, we here observe, that the root of that hesitation is found in the fact, that man does not attend to the character of those to whom the invitations of the gospel are addressed. They are the ungodly whom Christ came to save-the lost whom Christ came to seek the sinful whom he came to call to repentance -the diseased whom he beckons to a physician-in a word, "sinners, even the chief," are earnestly invited to the Saviour of the lost. In what character, then, are we to come to the Redeemer? It is simply and only as sinners. We are not to ask the question, Am I a penitent? or have I faith? We are to go as sinners; and only when we do so are we welcoming the gospel invitation, or entering on the gospel's peace. Let the soul be haunted by the thought that it must in some way reform, or repent, or believe, before coming, and it will die in its sins; for it is in the act of coming that these results are wrought in the soul. A pardon is freely offered to me as a sinner of mankind. Do I freely take it as it is offered? Then I live for ever. Do I pause and hesitate and delay? Then I am devising another gospel than that of God. I am vexing myself in vain; I am actually waiving away what the Son of God came from heaven to earth to present, and the end of that can only be protracted misery, or the second death. Further, a still more subtle form of error is to conclude that a certain amount of feeling, of sorrow, or of tears, must interpose between my hearing the offer and accepting of it, and it is here that many prolong their spiritual bondage. This is the enchanted ground on which self-righteousness in its finest form is very frequently indulged, although the price of that indulgence be misery. Instead of surrendering themselves at once to the Redeemer, and at once rejoicing in his peace, men would weep, and lament, and delay, forgetting that they may die while they are so employed, and that |