Part 108 HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness
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Part 109 HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness
Back to HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness
And so I come to the next thing proposed, namely—to acquaint you with some means, helps, and directions which may enable you to make a progress in holiness, and to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord. And,
[1.] First, If ever you would perfect holiness, if ever you would attain to higher degrees of holiness than any yet you have attained to, then labor to be more and more sensible of your spiritual needs and deficiencies of grace and holiness. Ah Christians! you must be often in casting up your accounts, and in looking over the defects of your holiness. He who has most holiness—yet lacks much more than what he has attained to. Witness the prevalence of his corruptions, witness his easy falling before temptation, witness his aptness to faint in the day of affliction, witness his staggering in the day of opposition, witness his shifts in the day of persecution, and witness his actual unpreparedness and unfitness for the day of his death. The more any Christian sees himself defective in holiness, the more he will labor after holiness.
Psalm 119:59-60, "I thought on my ways—and turned my feet unto your testimonies: I made haste, and delayed not to keep your commandments." The Hebrew word which is here used for thinking, signifies to think on a man's ways accurately, advisedly, seriously, studiously, minutely. This holy man of God thought exactly and minutely on all his purposes and practices, on all his doings and sayings, on all his words and works, and finding too many of them to be short of the rule, yes, to be against the rule—he turns his feet to God's testimonies; having found out his errors, upon a diligent search, a strict scrutiny, he turns over a new leaf, and frames his course more exactly by rule.
O Christians! you must look as well to your spiritual needs as to your spiritual enjoyments. You must look as well to your layings out as to your layings up. You must look as well forward to what you should be—as backward to what you are. Certainly that Christian will never be eminent in holiness, who never has an eye to behold his little holiness. He who is more affected with that little holiness he has, than he is afflicted about those great measures of holiness that he lacks, will ever be a puny dwarf in holiness. The more sensible we are of our own weakness and emptiness, the more pleasure God will take to fill us with his own fullness, and to perfect in us the work of holiness. But,