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THE BRIGHTEST DAY SUCCEEDS THE DARKEST NIGHT

Some receive the knowledge of forgiveness without much sense of sin, and their appreciation of Christ as Saviour is proportionately feeble. He that is forgiven much, the same loveth much. There may be the sense of forgiveness, with but little sense of needing it. The evening was not a dark one, and the morning is not a very bright one, although it may be a happy one.

If you have gone on in the world and its ways, wounding your conscience by sin and folly, before your conversion, the Saviour, if you are really separated to Him through grace, is loved by you in proportion as ^[p. 90] you feel your escape from your sins, and the judgment that impended over you. But then your love for Him is with reference to your former course. I think a great deal depends on the exercise of conscience and the nature of it which we pass through, before conversion or before we get peace. Some having been trained under the law have tried to be good, and having failed in their efforts, they delight in Christ not only as the Saviour, but as their righteousness, the answer to everything which their souls need before God. I see again some who have gone against their conscience, and have done wicked things; when convicted, they for the most part are occupied with the grace which has delivered such wretched sinners. The one has not been able to satisfy his conscience though making every effort to do so; the other has openly and violently run counter to his conscience.

Then there is a third class who, Isaac-like, have a quiet, easy life, and have little exercise of conscience, because walking according to the approved order of things in which they have been brought up. Grace presents a Saviour and forgiveness of sins to them, and they have the sense of pardon unknown to them before; but they had not suffered much from the need of it. This latter class are like the widow of Sarepta; they enjoy their quietude until some great link to this scene is broken, and then they learn their natural unfitness for God (1 Kings 17: 18); then the sufficiency of Christ above and out of death is known to the soul, and it is as it were a new conversion; and a devotedness follows unknown to the other classes, unless they have learned the evil of their nature as well as relief from its evils. The one who has learned the evil of his nature before God, will be far more devoted than the one who has only known pardon for the sins of his nature. The latter may be more enthusiastic in his love to the Saviour, but it is because of what He has done for him. The one who has found Him as his in the presence of ^[p. 91] God outside and apart from the old man, will rejoice in what He is to him, and Christ is his gain. The one who has found Him as his righteousness before God grows in the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. The first evening may not be the darkest. The widow of Sarepta’s was not; but the dark one came, and the bright morning followed. We have many evenings and many mornings. To my mind the sense of Christ is greater when He is known in preserving from an evil, rather than in rescuing from it. I think some natures, as Peter’s, will not bow without an actual fall; others submit and humble themselves when they reach only the brink; and others are subdued when they see the precipice from which His strong arm saves them. I think with every evening the foundation is enlarged and deepened; and hence, as one gets on, the cross and all that has been effected thereon gets a fuller and clearer place in the soul; but this must ever be with the sense of being united in glory to Him who was there.

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