I.
There is the Denial of all that remains of Evil in us.
How many sincere souls, when they look into their own hearts, find, to their horror, evil in them where they least expected it; find them part stone, when they should be all flesh; find them bound to earth and the love of earthly things, when they should be free from the world and the love of the world; find them occupied, alas! so often with idols and heart-lusts, when God alone ought to rule and reign. Here is a sphere for self-denial. Here is a service to be rendered to God, which will be very acceptable to Him, and which you alone can perform.
And if you would thus deny yourself, then examine yourself. Study the evils of your own nature. Recognise sin. Call it by its right name when you speak of it in the solitude of your own heart. If there are the remains of the deadly poison in you, say so to God, and keep on saying so with a holy importunity. "Confess your sins." Attack them as the farmer attacks the poison-plant amongst his crops, or the worms and flies which will blight his harvest, and which, unless he can ruin them, he knows full well will ruin him. That is the "perfect self-denial"--to cut off the right hand, and to pluck out and cast away what is dear as the right eye, if it offend against the law of purity and truth and love.
But you yourself are to do it. Do not say you cannot, for you alone can. If you would be His disciple--His holy, loving, pure, worthy disciple--you must deny yourself. Cry to Him for help as much as you will--you cannot cry too often or too long--but you must do more than that: you must arise, and deny your own selfish nature; pinch, and harass, and refuse your own inward sins, and expose them to the light of God. Confess them without ceasing, mortify them without mercy, and slay them, and give no quarter. Say, and say in earnest:--
Oh, how I hate these lusts of mine
That crucified my God!--
These sins that pierced and nailed His flesh
Fast to the fatal wood.
Yes, my Redeemer, they shall die--
My soul has so decreed;
I will not longer spare the things
That made my Saviour bleed.
Whilst with a melting, broken heart,
My murdered Lord I view,
I'll raise revenge against my sins,
And slay the murderers too.