But “God works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure.” By His Holy Spirit He strives in every human soul, awakening desires after a better and purer life. By His longsuffering, by messages from His Word, by the monitions of His providence, He strives to lead us to repentance. But we must repent. As while the earth cannot bear fruit unless the sun shine upon it, it is still the part of the earth to be fertile; so while we cannot repent unless God aid us, it is our part to turn from evil. Repentance cannot be exercised for us; it must be exercised by us.
God commands you to repent, just as to the apostles, when five thousand hungry men, besides women and children, surrounded them, and their whole store was five loaves and two fishes, Christ said, “Give ye them to eat.” The task is as much beyond your unaided power as that was above theirs; but address yourself to it as they did, in obedience to the Divine behest, and you will receive power from on high to accomplish not only it, but other tasks higher yet.
[2] The Gospel supposeth a power going along with it, and that the Holy Spirit works upon the minds of men, to quicken, excite, and assist them in their duty. If it were not so, the exhortations of preachers would be nothing else but a cruel and bitter mocking of sinners, and an ironical insulting over the misery and weakness of poor creatures, and for ministers to preach, or people to hear sermons, upon any other terms, would be the vainest expense of time and the idlest thing we do all the week; and all our dissuasives from sin, and exhortations to holiness and a good life, and vehement persuasions of men to strive to get to heaven, and to escape hell, would be just as if one should urge a blind man, by many reasons and arguments, taken from the advantages and comfort of that sense, and the beauty of external objects, by all means to open his eyes, and to behold the delights of nature, to see his way, and to look to his steps, and should upbraid him, and be very angry with him, for not doing so.—Tillotson, 1630–1694.
[3] Rooting up the large weeds of a garden loosens the earth, and renders the extraction of the lesser ones comparatively easy.—Elisa Cook.
[4] There is an antipathy between sinning and praying. The child that hath misspent the whole day in playing abroad, steals to bed at night for fear of a chiding from his father. Sin and prayer are such contraries, that it is impossible at a stride to step from one to another. Prayer will either make you leave off sinning, or sinning will make you leave off prayer.—Gurnall, 1617–1679.
The first true sign of spiritual life, prayer is also the means of maintaining it. Man can as well live physically without breathing, as spiritually without praying. There is a class of animals—the cetaceous, neither fish nor sea-fowl, that inhabit the deep. It is their home; they never leave it for the shore; yet, though swimming beneath its waves and sounding its darkest depths, they have ever and anon to rise to the surface that they may breathe the air. Without that these monarchs of the deep could not exist in the dense element in which they live, and move, and have their being. And something like what is imposed on them by a physical necessity, the Christian has to do by a spiritual one. It is by ever and anon ascending up to God, by rising through prayer into a loftier purer region for supplies of Divine grace, that he maintains his spiritual life. Prevent these animals from rising to the surface, and they die for want of breath; prevent him from rising to God, and he dies for want of prayer. “Give me children,” cried Rachel, “or else I die.” Let me breathe, says a man gasping, or else I die. Let me pray, says the Christian, or else I die.—Guthrie.
[5] Get some Christian friend (whom thou mayest trust above others) to be thy faithful monitor. Or, that man hath a great help for the maintaining the power of godliness that has an open-hearted friend that dare speak his heart to him. A stander-by sees more sometimes by a man than the actor can do by himself, and is more fit to judge of his actions than he of his own; sometimes self-love blinds us in our own cause, that we are over-suspicious of the worst by ourselves, which makes us appear to ourselves worse than we are. Now, that thou mayest not deprive thyself of so great help from thy friend, be more to keep thy heart ready with meekness to receive, yes, with thankfulness embrace a reproof from his mouth. Those that cannot bear plain-dealing hurt themselves most; for by this they seldom hear the truth.—Gurnalt, 1617–1679.
[6] The more we defer, the more difficult and painful our work must needs prove; every day will both enlarge our task and diminish our ability to perform it. Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it, and the further on we go, the more we have to come back; every step we take forward (even before we can return hither, into the state wherein we are at present) must be repeated; all the web we spin must be unravelled.
Vice, as it groweth in age, so it improveth in stature and strength; from a puny child it soon waxeth a lusty striping, then riseth to be a sturdy man, and after awhile becometh a massy giant, whom we shall scarce dare to encounter, whom we shall be very hardly able to vanquish; especially seeing that as it groweth taller and stouter, so we shall dwindle and prove more impotent, for it feedeth upon our vitals, and thriveth by our decay; it waxeth mighty by stripping us of our best forces, by enfeebling our reason, by perverting our will, by corrupting our temper, by debasing our courage, by seducing all our appetites and passions to a treacherous compliance with itself: every day our mind groweth more blind, our will more resty, our spirit more faint, our passions more headstrong and untamable; the power and empire of sin do strangely by degrees encroach, and continually get ground upon us, till it hath quite subdued and enthralled us. First we learn to bear it; then we come to like it; by and by we contract a friendship with it; then we dote upon it; at last we become enslaved to it in a bondage, which we shall hardly be able, or willing, to shake off; when not only our necks are fitted to the yoke, our hands are manacled, and our feet shackled thereby, but our heads and hearts do conspire in a base submission thereto, when vice hath made such impression on us, when this pernicious weed hath take so deep root in our mind, will, and affection, it will demand an extremely toilsome labour to extirpate it.—Barrow, 1630–1677.
Repentance is entirely in God’s disposal. This grace is in the soul from God, as light is in the air from the sun, by continual emanation; so that God may shut or open His hands, contract or diffuse, set forth or suspend the influences of it as He pleases. And if God gives not repenting grace, there will be a hard heart and a dry eye, maugre all the poor frustraneous endeavours of nature. A piece of brass may as easily melt, or a flint bewater itself, as the heart of man, by any innate power of its own, resolve itself into a penitential humiliation. If God does not, by an immediate blow of His omnipotence, strike the rock, these waters will never gush out. The Spirit blows where it listeth, and if that blows not, these showers can never fall.