If we would avoid this fearful condition, we must
often go to the Gospels, and place the words of the Lord, in their
various teachings, especially as they come to us from the Mount, as it
were in judgment over against us, and reading verse by verse, fathom the
depths of our hearts, and confess whether we are guilty or no. Would we
escape such guilt, we must study these instructions again and again,
until, as Moses commanded of the laws of the elder Scripture, "they
shall be with us when we sit in our homes, or walk by the way, or lie
down, or rise up. And we shall bind them for a sign upon our hands, and
they shall be as frontlets between our eyes. And we shall write them
upon the posts of our houses, and upon our gates."
When we place the words of the Lord in judgment over against us, and
feel compelled to acknowledge our unfaithfulness to their requirements,
there is danger of our falling into despair through the consciousness
that is thus forced upon us of our want of love for the law of the Lord.
The indulgence of our own wills is so sweet to us, that we cannot see
how it is possible that the yoke of the Lord can ever become easy to our
stiffened necks. We feel as though an obedience that did not spring from
true love could not be called obedience, nay, was almost a sin; for it
seems to savor of hypocrisy. In this state of mind, our only refuge is
in that faith which St. Paul tells us "is the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things unseen"; and then, unless this faith be
strong enough to make us obey, though not from love, yet from a simple
belief that at any rate obedience is better than disobedience, our state
is wretched indeed.
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