, surely,' says William Guthrie in his
_Saving Interest_, 'when it consists of so much in _desire_.' Now, both
its exceeding difficulty and its exceeding ease also just consist in
that. Nothing is so easy to a healthy man as the desire for food; but,
then, nothing is so impossible to a dead man, or even to a sick man, as
just desire. Desire sounds easy, but how few among us have that capacity
and that preparation for Christ and His salvation that stands in desire.
Have you that desire? Really and truly, in your heart of hearts, have
you that desire? Then how well it is with you! For that is all that God
looks for in him who comes to the poor man's market; indeed, it is the
only currency accepted there. Isaiah's famous invitation is drawn out
just to meet the case of a man who has desire, and nothing but desire, in
his heart. All the encouragements and assurances that his evangelical
genius can devise are set forth by the prophet to attract and to win the
desiring heart. The desiring heart says to itself, I would give the
whole world if I had it just to see Christ, just to be near Christ, and
just, if it were but possible, that I should ever be the least thing like
Christ. Now, that carries God. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, cannot resist that. No true father could, and least of all a
father who loves his son, and who has such a son to love as God has in
Christ. Well, He says; if you love and desire, honour and estimate My
Son like that, I cannot deny Him the reward and the pleasure of
possessing you and your love. And thus, without any desert in you--any
desert but sheer desire--you have made the greatest, the easiest, the
speediest, the most splendid purchase that all the poor man's market
affords. No, William Guthrie; faith is not so very difficult to the
sinner who has desire. For where desire of the right quality is, and the
right quantity, there is everything. And all the merchandise of God is
at that sinner's nod and bid.

Ho, then, he that hath no money, but only the _desire_ for money, and for
what money can, and for what money cannot, buy, come and buy, without
money and without price. Instead of money, instead of merit, even if you
have nothing but Rutherford's only fitness for Christ, 'My loathsome
wretchedness,' then come with that. Come boldly with that. Come as if
you had in and on you the complete opposite of that. The opposite of
loathsomeness is delightsomeness; and the o