October 24

He is long-suffering to usward, nor willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. - 2 Peter 3:9.

MANY who do not deny the loving-kindness of God too frequently obscure and conceal it. They do not often, indeed, eclipse it totally, but partially. They do not lay a foundation for every man as a sinner: their scheme does not even allow them to use the language of Scripture itself. They make a distinction between God’s secret and God’s revealed will,-a distinction which, if men were to make and act upon in their worldly concerns, would be sure soon to obtain for them a disreputable character.

What God says in his word we should take just as it is, and believe him to be sincere when we are assured that he is “long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” But there are those who employ the thunder of Sinai more than they do the still small voice of Zion. Solomon says, “Strong wine must be given unto them that are ready to perish;” but there are some who so dilute spiritual things as to leave no strength in them; they so encumber the grace of God with their hard conditions and qualifications that there is scarcely a possibility of hope for many while they feel as they do. The reason they assign is, they are afraid of presumption in men.

Why are they not also afraid of despair? Doubtless many more perish through despair than through presumption. Often, in secular affairs, many there are who need not have failed had they not desponded too soon; and in religious concerns, when the sinner feels that there is no hope he becomes desperate, and the desperation he feels links him to his unrenewed state, and he says, “There is no hope: therefore we will walk every man according to his own desires.” Let us always remember that the Scripture nowhere justifies the despair of any man. As Dr. Watts has expressed it in’ one of his hymns,-

“No mortal has a just pretence

To perish by despair.”

But there are some who “refuse,” as David says, “to be comforted:” and wherefore? “Oh,” they say, “I am so unworthy! I am so guilty!” intimating that if they were not so bad they could cherish a hope of being saved. This is at best a sort of self-righteous pride, operating under the show and pretext of humility; it must be destroyed, and all who are the subjects of it must be brought to submit themselves unto the righteousness which is of God,-must come to him as they are, naked, to be clothed, poor, to be enriched, guilty, to be justified. The language of the apostle, “To him that worketh not,”-that is, for this view and purpose,-“but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness.” Let us remember that, if we do not deem ourselves too good, he does not deem us too bad, to be saved by him. All who now come and believe on his dear name, “though their sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”