Hours of Quiet Thought

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of his own family, counted on an acquittal, and made no preparation for meeting him on the day of trial. II. Another error which exists on this subject is that of supposing thas because Christ has died for us, and by His death made an atonement for sin, therefore no preparation is necessary on our part for meeting with the Divine Being. While there are multitudes who make no preparation for meeting with God, because they think that He is too merciful to punish them, there are probably as many who think that because Christ has died for them, no kind of preparation on their part is necessary. It is true that Christ has died. His death, however, was never intended to render personal preparation on our part unnecessary. We are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are to give all diligence to make our calling and election sure. To suppose that because Christ has died for us, therefore no preparation on our part is necessary, is to indulge an error as great as would be that of the man who refused to co-operate with his physician in the application of the means necessaryfor the restoration of health. The science and the skill of the ablest physician in the world will not, and cannot, render co-operation on the part of the patient unnecessary. It is necessary that he work together with the physician, if he would have restored to him the health he has lost. He must take the medicine he prescribes, he must abstain from all he prohibits, he must attend to the regimen he orders. It is by actively co-operating with him that he expects to be cured. He does not expect to be cured against his will. He does not expect to be cured in the same way that a piece of mechanism is repaired when it goes wrong, by merely lying passive in the hands of the workman. A man who supposes that...