That is what
you should do. Why are you not like that man? Why are you not like
my saints? Why are you not like me, the Lord Jesus Christ?"
You all surely know what I mean. You know that I do not mean that
you hear a voice speaking to your ears, but that thoughts and
feelings come into your heart, without you putting them there: ay,
often enough, in spite of your trying to drive them away. Now, those
right thoughts are the kingdom of God within you. They are the voice
of the Lord Jesus Christ speaking by His Holy Spirit to your spirit,
and telling you that He is your King, and that you ought to obey Him;
and that obeying Him means being righteous and good, as He is
righteous and good; and calling on you to give up your own wills and
fancies, and to do His will, and let Him make you holy, even as He is
holy. That, I say, is the kingdom of God showing itself within you,
telling you that God is your King, and telling you how to obey Him.
But what if a man will not hear that voice? What if a man rebels
proudly against the good thoughts that rise in his mind, and tries to
forget them, and grows angry with them, angry with the preacher, the
Church Service, the Bible itself, because they WILL go on reminding
him of what he knows in his heart to be right? What if those good
thoughts only make him the more stubborn and determined to do his own
pleasure, and follow his own interests, and do his own will?
Do you not see that to that man God's kingdom over his heart is a
savour of death unto death--that his finding out that God is his Lord
only makes him more rebellious--that God's Spirit striving with his
heart to bring it right, only stirs up his stubbornness and self-
will, and makes him go the more obstinately wrong?
Oh, my friends, this is a fearful thought! That man can become worse
by God's loving desire to make him better! But so it is.
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