Let Him deal with
us, if He see fit, as He dealt with David of old, when He forgave his
sin, and yet punished it by the death of his child. Let Him do what He
will by us, provided He does--what He will do--make us good men.
That is what we need to be--just, merciful, pure, faithful, loyal,
useful, honourable with true honour, in the sight of God and man. That
is what we need to be. That is what we shall be at last, if we put
ourselves into Christ's hand, and ask Him for the clean heart and the
right spirit, which is His own spirit, the spirit of all goodness. And
provided we attain, at last, to that--provided we attain, at last, to the
truly heroic and divine life, which is the life of virtue, it will matter
little to us by what wild and weary ways, or through what painful and
humiliating processes, we have arrived thither. If God has loved us, if
God will receive us, then let us submit loyally and humbly to His law.
"Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He
receiveth."
SERMON XXXIII. HUMAN SOOT
Preached for the Kirkdale Ragged Schools, Liverpool, 1870.
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