he soul respond.
So that, especially applicable to the believer's exercises, then, is
what, in the following language of an eminent writer, is said concerning
the universal tendency of faith in the righteousness of Christ:--"When
he discovers his own guilt and misery, and the absolute perfection and
ineffable excellencies of this righteousness, the believer requires no
force nor compulsion to embrace it. When the avenger of blood was at his
heels, did the manslayer require any violence to urge him on to the
asylum where he might lodge secure? When the deluge of wrath was
descending, and all around becoming one watery waste, was any force
necessary to shut Noah up in the ark, where he might abide in safety
amidst the wreck and horrors of a sinking world? And when conscience
writes bitter things against him, and makes him possess the iniquities
of his youth; when the heavens are gathering blackness, and before him
he sees, at the opening into eternity, the piercing eyes of Omniscience
looking fully on him through the terrors of insulted, incensed
omnipotent justice: does the believer need any compulsion to drive him
out of his own lying refuges, and constrain him to betake himself to the
Divine and All-sufficient righteousness of Immanuel? No. He repairs to
it with eagerness, and clings to it with a tenacity that time cannot
relax, nor all the agonies of death dissolve. We speak of trust,
dependence, and reliance, on this righteousness. These however are terms
far too feeble to express the affection towards it, which the believer
feels. He prefers it to his chief joy; glories in it as all his
salvation and all his desire, and determines to know nothing else.
Divinely precious and infinitely perfect as it is, there is no part of
it with which he can dispense. Less than this cannot reach his wretched
case, nor impart the blessings that he wants. His polluted and
never-dying soul needs it all: and, therefore, he embraces it wholly,
and rests on it alone[159]."

Seventhly. The exercise requires that it be engaged in devotionally. It
is a part of religious worship, and claims that solemnity of mind that
is due to every religious service. Every part of it is an exercise of
religion, and the frame of mind that should be brought to each of them
ought to be sustained in waiting on the whole. All things that could
give solemnity to an observance unite to invest this with a devout
character. The claims of its glorious Object, its ow