" Not one of
St. Paul's Epistles but talks of growing in grace and in the
knowledge of God, of being FILLED with God's Spirit, of having our
eyes more and more open to understand God's truth. Not one of St.
Paul's Epistles but contains prayers of St. Paul that the men to
whom he writes may become holier and wiser. And St. Paul says that
he himself needed to go forward--that he wanted fresh strength--that
he had to forget what was past, and consider all he had done and
felt as nothing, and press forward to the prize of his high calling;
that he needed to be daily conquering himself more and more, keeping
down his bad feelings, hunting out one bad habit after another,
lest, by any means, when he had preached to others, he himself
should become a castaway. Therefore, I said rightly, that the Bible
is always bidding us go forwards. You cannot read your Bibles
without seeing this. What else was the use of St. Paul's Epistles?
They were written to Christian men, redeemed men, converted men,
most of them better I fear than ever we shall be; and for what? to
tell them not be content to remain as they were, to tell them to go
forwards, to improve, to be sure that they were only just inside the
gate of God's kingdom, and that if they would go on to perfection,
they would find strength, and holiness, and blessing, and honour,
and happiness, which they as yet did not dream of.
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