Frequent instances of this unfairness are visible in the world.  When people make themselves easy and secure, without faith which works by love and purifies the heart—­without repentance which mourns for sin as dishonorable to God, and in itself an evil thing, and a bitter, and without devotedness to the service of God, as well as a reliance on his grace in Christ, no matter what they substitute in the place of these graces, all is of no avail; hope is built on the sand.  That many of these vain substitutes are to be found among men, Who is insensible?  When fear hath this effect, it leads down to the fiery lake.

III.  Sometimes fear puts men upon duty in order to atone for sin and merit the divine favor.  Afraid of God’s judgments, they set themselves to do commanded duties, and place their dependence on these doings of their own.

Duties done by men have nothing meritorious in them.  The design of many things which God hath enjoined is to serve as a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ.  None are intended to save by any virtue in them.  By nothing which man can do is God made his debtor.  Neither doth ought done by man recommend to the divine favor if perverted and made the ground of hope toward God.

The sinner’s best recommendation to the divine favor is a sense of his own demerit, which leads him humble and self abased to cast himself on grace in a mediator.  His most prevalent prayer is that made by the publican—­“God be merciful to me a sinner.”  Sinners are invited to the Savior, and encouraged to hope in him—­“Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth.  It is a faithful saying, that Christ came into the world to save sinners.”  But he saves only those who receive and trust in him.  If we go about to establish our own righteousness, relying on our own doings as the ground of our acceptance with God, he will give to us according to our works —­“Behold all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks; walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled:  This shall ye have from mine hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow.” *

Isaiah l. 11.

Not that sinners are to neglect the means of grace, or indulge in sin.  When God promised his church to give them a new heart, and cause them to walk in his statutes, he declared that those blessings should be given in answer to prayer—­“Yet for this will I be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them.”  And when the apostle teaches how to seek renewing grace, he directs to “lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness and receive with meekness, the ingrafted word.”

Saving grace is perhaps, never given till it is asked of God.  Sinners are made to see their need of this divine gift and led to cry to God for it.  It is then when they ask that they receive.  That they shall not ask in vain, is intimated with sufficient clearness in the word of truth.  “Whosoever shalt call on the name of the Lord, shall be saved.  If thou knewest the gift of God—­thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.”