r,
or that he will be conscious of it, or be able to speak of it, but that
on the whole thus he will feel.

When, then, even an unlearned person thus trained--from his own heart,
from the action of his mind upon itself, from struggles with self, from
an attempt to follow those impulses of his own nature which he feels to
be highest and noblest, from a vivid natural perception (natural,
though cherished and strengthened by prayer, natural, though unfolded
and diversified by practice, natural, though of that new and second
nature which God the Holy Ghost gives), from an innate, though
supernatural perception of the great vision of Truth which is external
to him (a perception of it, not indeed in its fulness, but in glimpses,
and by fits and seasons, and in its persuasive influences, and through
a courageous following on after it, as a man in the dark might follow
after some dim and distant light)--I say, when a person thus trained
from his own heart, reads the declarations and promises of the Gospel,
are we to be told that he believes in them merely because he has been
bid believe in them? Do we not see he has besides this a something in
his own breast which bears a confirming testimony to their truth? He
reads that the heart is "deceitful above all things and desperately
wicked[4]," and that he inherits an evil nature from Adam, and that he
is still under its power, except so far as he has been renewed. Here
is a mystery; but his own actual and too bitter experience bears
witness to the truth of the declaration; he feels the mystery of
iniquity within him. He reads, that "without holiness no man shall see
the Lord[5];" and his own love of what is true and lovely and pure,
approves and embraces the doctrine as coming from God. He reads, that
God is angry at sin, and will punish the sinner, and that it is a hard
matter, nay, an impossibility, for us to appease His wrath. Here,
again, is a mystery: but here, too, his conscience anticipates the
mystery, and convicts him; his mouth is stopped. And when he goes on
to read that the Son of God has Himself come into the world in our
flesh, and died upon the Cross for us, does he not, amid the awful
mysteriousness of the doctrine, find those words fulfilled in him which
that gracious Saviour uttered, "And I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto Me"? He cannot choose but believe in
Him. He says, "O Lord, Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed."