onceit? What justice which will not seem
unjust? What love which will not seem hardness of heart, in the sight of
Him who charges His angels with folly, and the very heavens are not clean
in His sight? Who loved Him better, and whom did He love better, than St
John? Yet, what befel St John when, in the spirit, he saw Him even
somewhat as He is?--"And I fell at His feet as dead." If St John himself
was struck down with awe, what shall we feel, even the best and purest
among us? All we can do is to cast ourselves, now and for ever, in life,
in death, and in the day of judgment, on His boundless mercy and love--
who stooped from heaven to die for us and cry, God be merciful to me a
sinner.

Therefore, I have many fears for some who are ready enough to talk of
their fulness of hope and their assurance of salvation, and to join in
hymns which express weariness of this life and longings for the joys of
heaven, and prayers that they may depart and be with Christ. If they are
not in earnest in such words they mock God; but if they are in earnest,
some of them, I fear much, tempt God. What if He took them at their
word? What if He gave them their wish? What if they departed and
entered the presence of Christ, only to meet with a worse fate than that
of Gerontius? Only to be overwhelmed with shame and terror, because,
though they have been talking of being with Christ, they have not been
trying to be like Christ; because they have not sought after holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord; because they have not tried to
purify themselves, even as He is pure; and have, poor, heedless souls,
gone out of the world, with all their sins upon their head, to enter a
place for which they will find themselves utterly unfit, because it is a
place into which nothing can enter which defileth, or committeth
abomination, or maketh a lie, and from which the covetous are specially
excluded; and in which will be fulfilled the parable of the man who came
to the feast, not having on a wedding garment,--Take him, bind him hand
and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness. There shall be wailing
and gnashing of teeth.

Assurance, my friends, may be reasonable enough when it is founded on
repentance and hatred of evil, and love and practice of what is good.
But, again, assurance may be as unreasonable as it is offensive. We
blame a man who has too much assurance about earthly things. Let us
be