The first step in the divine life

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"They shall come with weeping." Jeremiah 31:9

Wherever God begins a gracious work in the soul, He takes away the heart of stone and gives the heart of flesh. Repentance, true repentance, is the first step in the divine life. True religion begins with a sorrowful heart and weeping eyes.

Wherever there is a spiritual conviction of sin, there will be penitential grief and godly sorrow on account of it. And it is by—this godly sorrow—this brokenness of heart—this contrition of spirit—this penitential grief—that the true convictions wrought by the blessed Spirit are distinguished from those mere natural convictions under which the heart is as hard as adamant, and as full of rebellion as Satan himself.

It is in this broken heart—broken up with the plough of convictions, that the seed of the word takes root; and the deeper, for the most part, the convictions, and the more pungent the grief and sorrow for sin—the deeper root will the word of grace strike into the soul.