eyes
for it. Here is the highest revelation of God's desire for man to be
reconciled with Him, and be at one with Him, His happy child; but man
either despises or spurns His overtures. Here is the offer of pardon
for all the past, of heirship of all the promises, of blessedness in
all the future, but man owns that he is indifferent to the existence
and claims of God, and is quite willing to accept the sleeping
retribution of bygone years, and to risk a future irradiated by no star
of hope. Here is God in Christ beseeching him to be reconciled,
declaring how much the reconciliation has cost, but the frail child of
yesterday absolutely refuses to be at peace. No trace of tears in his
voice, no shame on his face, no response to God's love in his heart.

This is sin at its worst. Not in a Nero drenched with the blood of
relatives and saints; nor in an Alva expert to invent new methods of
torture; nor in the brutalized expression of the felon; nor in the
degradation of the heathen: but in those beside you, who have heard of
the love of Jesus from their earliest childhood, and who know that He
died for them, and waits to bless them, but who deliberately and
persistently refuse Him, you will find the most terrible revelations of
what man is capable of. "This is the condemnation, that Light is come
into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their
deeds were evil."

Conviction in itself is not enough. Many have been convicted who have
never gone on to conversion. They have dropped to the ground as
untimely fruit, blighted before its maturity.

Conviction of sin does not come to all in the same manner or to the
same extent. Indeed, those who have come to Christ in early life are
in a degree exempt from drinking this bitter cup, though they have much
tenderness of conscience afterward.

Do not wait for more conviction, but come to Jesus as you are, and tell
Him that the saddest symptom in your case is your inability to feel as
you know you should. Do not tarry to be convinced of sin. Do not stay
away till you feel more deeply. Do not suppose that strongly roused
emotions purchase His favor. His command is absolute--_Believe_. But
whenever that true repentance is wrought which needs not to be repented
of, or those tears of penitence fall from the eyes of the suppliant,
the means will always be the person and work and love of Jesus Christ.
This is the burning-glass through which the Spirit f