He will give you His Spirit
to make you behave like His sons, to obey Him of your own free will,
from love, and gratitude, and honour, and filial reverence. He will
make you love what He loves, and hate what He hates. He will give
you clear consciences and free hearts, to fear nothing on earth or in
heaven, but the shame and ingratitude of disobeying your Father.
The Spirit of adoption, by which you look up to God as your Father,
is your right. He has given it to you, and nothing but your own want
of faith, and wilful turning back to cowardly superstition, and to
the wilful sins which go before superstition, and come after it, can
take it from you. So said St. Paul to the Romans and the Galatians,
and so I have a right, ay, and a bounden duty, to say to every man
and woman in this church this day.
For, my dear friends, if you ask me, what has this to do with us?
Has it not everything to do with us? Whether we are leading good
lives, or middling lives, or utterly bad worthless lives, has it not
everything to do with us? Who is there here who has not at times
said to himself: "God so holy, and pure, and glorious; while I am so
unjust, and unclean, and mean! And God so great and powerful; while
I am so small and weak! What shall I do? Does not God hate and
despise me? Will He not take from me all which I love best? Will He
not hurl me into endless torment when I die? How can I escape from
Him? Wretched man that I am, I cannot escape from Him! How, then,
can I turn away His hate? How can I make Him change His mind? How
can I soothe Him and appease Him? What shall I do to escape hell-
fire?"
Did you ever have such thoughts? But, did you find those thoughts,
that slavish terror of God's wrath, that dread of hell, made you any
BETTER men? I never did.
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