sin, and therefore glad to come to God, rather than shrinking away
from him! Conceive how completely to such an one would Christ's words be
fulfilled, "Seek, and ye shall find!" When would his prayers be
unblessed or unfruitful? When would he turn his thoughts to God without
feeling pleasure in doing so; without a lively consciousness of God's
love to him; without an assured sense of the reality of things not seen,
of redemption and grace and glory? Would not the communion with God,
enjoyed by one so untainted, come up to the full measure of those high
promises, "It shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer,
and while they are yet speaking, I will hear?" Would it not be plain,
that God was as truly found, by such a person, as he was sought in
sincerity and earnestness?

But now, take the most of us: suppose us not to have been kept carefully
from evil, nor led on steadily in good; suppose us to have reached
boyhood with bad dispositions, ready for the first temptation, with
habits of good uncultivated; suppose us to have no great horror of a
lie, when it can serve our turn; with much love of pleasure, and little
love of our duty; with much, selfishness, and little or no thought of
God: suppose such an one, so sadly altered from a state of baptismal
purity, to be saying his prayers as he had been taught to say them, and
saying them sometimes with a thought of their meaning and a wish that
God would hear them. But does God hear them? I ask of your own
consciences, whether you have had any sense that he has heard you?
whether death and judgment, Christ and Christ's service, have become
more real to you after such prayers? If not, then is it not manifest,
that you have sought God, and have not found him; that you have called
upon him and he has not heard? You know by experience, that you are not
as those true children who are ever with him, who listen to catch the
lightest whisper of his Spirit, for whom, he, too, vouchsafes to bless
the faintest breathing of their prayer.

Or, again, in trying to turn from evil to good, have you ever found your
resolutions give way, the ground which you had gained slide from under
your feet, till you fell back again to what you were at the beginning?
Has this ever happened to us? If it has, then in that case, also, we
sought God, but failed to find him; the victory was not yours, but the
enemy's; the Spirit of Christ did not help you so as to conquer.

Take another case y