My brother, my sister, do you ever question your spiritual state, doubting as to whether you are a child of God or not, wondering in the obscurity of your mind as to how you stand in the sight of God?  I do not think any one need be in doubt as to this matter.  Are you living a life of obedience to Christ?  Let us see.  You surely have been baptized.  As baptism was his first public act, for you to follow his example and walk in his steps it became you to submit to the same ordinance expanded and illuminated as to its significance and use by his subsequent teachings.  This you did, and you did it in the true spirit of obedience and love.  You are no hypocrite, I am sure; for the hypocrite never examines himself.  He totally lacks the goodness and sincerity and honesty that lead to self-examinations.  The hypocrite does not love the house of God.  He does not breathe freely in an atmosphere of prayer.  His highest ambition is to make a fair show in the flesh, to secure some personal aggrandizement through his formal professions.

You do not belong to this class.  You feel in your heart that you love Jesus, and often weep that you do not love him more.  This very love should assure your heart that you are a child of God, for “love is of God, and God is love.”  You cheerfully, and in love for the Brethren, stoop to follow his example and obey his command by taking part in the ordinance of feet-washing.  You eat the Lord’s Supper as nearly after his example as can be known, in honor of him, and partake of the Communion of the bread and wine in remembrance of his broken body and shed blood.  In addition to all this you hate the inborn corruptions of your fleshly mind.  You sometimes sing from your heart’s pure depth: 

“I hate my own vain thoughts that rise, But love thy law, my God.”

And to you one of the most pleasing contemplations of heaven is founded upon the assurance that there will be no sin or sorrow for sin there, nor sinful thoughts.  You even here rejoice many times, in the sweet foretastes of that happy state.  When you meet the loving eyes and friendly hands of brethren and sisters here assembled for worship, you feel a delicious calm and a holy peace in your soul.  It is at such times and on such occasions that you realize just what the apostle means by what he says of the experience of some heavenly-minded Christian brethren and sisters who lived and felt eighteen hundred years ago very much as you feel now.  Identifying himself with them, he says:  “We have all been made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”  “Be thou faithful unto death, and God shall give thee the crown of life.”

At the close of this edifying discourse we sang the old hymn beginning: 

  “How happy are they who their Savior obey—.”

Prayer was offered, meeting broke up, and Brother Moomaw and I went to Michael Whitmore’s for dinner; then to Valley meetinghouse in afternoon, where he spoke from Acts 26; and stayed all night at Daniel Glick’s.