Gardiner Spring (1785 – 1873)
American minister and religious author.
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Serve God, and God will take care of you. Submit to His will, trust in His grace, and resign yourself into His hands with the assurance that the Lord is well pleased with those "that hope in His mercy."
Sensible of his ill-desert and helplessness, persuaded of the all-sufficiency of the Redeemer, the believer therefore makes a voluntary surrender of himself into the hands of Christ, to be saved upon His own terms. He relinquishes his vain confidences, and places all his hopes on Christ. He casts himself into His arms. " Lord, to whom shall I go but to Thee?"
The evidence of our acceptance in the Beloved rises in proportion to our love, to our repentance, to our humility, to our faith, to our self-denial, to our delight in duty. Other evidence than this the Bible knows not — God has not given.
The ancient idea that God sends epidemics and pestilences as punishment for the sins of His people has been widely proclaimed in the Christian pulpit. To the Almighty has been attributed direct responsibility for the frequent plagues which have scourged Christendom. ...during an epidemic of malignant cholera, Dr. Gardiner Spring, pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church of New York City, said: "This fatal scourge is the hand of God... It points us to the provoking cause of God's displeasure, and calls upon us to bow in penitential confession before his throne.... The judgment we deplore has aimed its vengeance at three prominent abominations—Sabbath-breaking, intemperance, and debauchery." Throughout many centuries the Christian church failed to recognize the contradiction between the God of vengeance which it worshiped and the God of love proclaimed by Jesus.
The essential difference between that knowledge which is, and that which is not conclusive evidence of Christian character, lies in this: the object of the one is the agreement of the several parts of a theological proposition; the object of the other is moral beauty, the intrinsic loveliness of God and Divine things. The sinner sees and hates; the saint sees and loves.
The same bond which unites believers to Christ binds them to each other. The love which is exercised towards the Head extends to the members. The union itself necessarily involves a union of affection. Those who love Christ love those who are like Him and those who are beloved by Him.
Faith in Christ is not an exercise of the understanding merely; it is an affection of the heart. "With the heart man believeth." To those who believe Christ is precious.
Is thine a life of devotion, of meekness and humility, of supreme attachment to heavenly and divine things; of self-denial and of universal benevolence? If after candid examination you find reason to hope that you are one of God's dear children washed with His blood, sanctified by the Spirit, clothed with the righteousness of the Well Beloved — cherish that hope as the gift of heaven. Dismiss your fears; bind yourself to be the Lord's in an everlasting covenant; think less of yourself and more and more of the name, the cross, the glory of your Redeemer. Henceforth "let your light shine."
If you have nothing of the spirit of prayer, nothing of the love of the brotherhood, nothing of mortifying the spirit of the world, nothing of growth in grace, of cordial, habitual, persevering obedience to the Divine commands, how can it be that you have been brought nigh by the blood of Christ?
The highest point of Christian experience is to press forward. It is a distinguishing trait in the character of every good man that he grows in grace. Grace in the heart as certainly improves and advances, as a tree thrives in a kindly and well watered soil.
The act of the soul, in surrendering itself into the hands of Christ, forms a connecting bond between Him as the Vine and the soul as the branches, which communicates life, strength, nourishment, and beauty. In a word, with a just view of the character, and a supreme attachment to the person of Christ, the believer yields himself into His hands as a full and complete Saviour. Him he receives; upon Him he rests, and rests for time and eternity.
The man who is satisfied, because he thinks he is safe, who feels that he has religion enough, because he thinks he has enough to save him from hell, is as ignorant of the power as he is a stranger to the consolation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Faith from its essential nature implies the fallen state of man, while it recognizes the principles of the covenant of grace. It is itself the condition of that covenant. It is a grace which is alike distinguished from the love of angels and the faith of devils. It is peculiar to the returning sinner. None but a lost sinner needs it; none but a humbled sinner relishes it.
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