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06/11/2006:The servant of the Lord must be gentle.
When God conquers us and takes aoo the flint out of our nature, and we get deep visions into the Spirit of Jesus, we then see as never before the great rarity of gentlness of spirit in this dark and unheavenly world.
The graces of the Spirit do not settle themselves down upon us by chance, and if we do not
discern certain states of grace, and choose them, and in our thoughts nourish them, they never becomne fastented in our nature or behaviour.
EVery advance step in grace must be preceded by first apprehending it, and then a prayerful
resolve to have it.
So few are willing to undergo the suffering our of which thorough gentleness comes. We
must die before we are turned into gentleness, and crucifixion involves suffering; it is a real
breaking and crushing of self, which wrings teh heart and conquers the mind.
There is a good deal of mere mental and logical sancification nowadays, which is only a
religious fiction. It consists of mentally putting one's self on teh altar, and then mentally
saying the altar sanctifies the gift, and then logically concluding therefore one is sanctified;
and such an one goes forth with a gay, flippant, theological prattle about teh deep things of
God. |
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