Lord; Thou knowest that I love
Thee. He saith unto him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou Me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love
Thee. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou
Me? Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest
thou Me? And he said unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou
knowest that I love Thee!

5. And, to sum up all--more than your humility, more than your
watchfulness, more than your prayerfulness, more than to teach you war,
and more than to try your love, the dregs and remainders of sin have been
left in your regenerate heart to exalt and to extol the grace of God. In
Emmanuel's very words, it has all been to make you a monument of God's
mercy. I put it to yourselves, then, ye people of God: does that not
satisfy you for a reason, and for an explanation, and for a justification
of all your shame and pain, and of all your bondage and misery and
wretchedness since you knew the Lord? Is there not a heart in you that
says, Yes! it was worth all my corruption and pollution and misery to
help to manifest forth and to magnify the glory of the grace of God? You
seize on Emmanuel's word that you are a monument of mercy. Somehow that
word pleases and reposes you. Yes, that is what out of all these post-
regeneration years you are. You would have been a monument to God's
mercy had you, like the thief on the cross, been glorified on the same
day on which you were first justified. But it will neither be the day of
your justification nor the day of your glorification that will make you
the greatest of all the monuments that shall ever be raised to the praise
of God's grace; it will be the days of your sanctification that will do
that. Paul was a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious at his
conversion, but he had to be a lifetime in grace and an apostle above all
the twelve before he became the chiefest of sinners and the most wretched
of saints. And though your first forgiveness was, no doubt, a great
proof of the grace of God, yet it was nothing, nothing at all, to your
forgiveness to-day. You had no words for the wonder and the praise of
your forgiveness to-day. You just took to your lips the cup of salvation
and let that silent action speak aloud your monumental praise. You were
a sinner at your regeneration, else you would not have been regenerated.
But you were not then the chief of sinners. Bu