REFLECTIONS
Pause Reader! pause my soul, over the contents of this Chapter. Surely nothing can be more solemn, nothing more affecting. Behold the Son of God, who came to seek and save that which was lost; pronouncing sure and certain destruction upon a class of men, whom every age have stood up with pretensions for greater holiness than others, and like one of them in the Parable, all of them more or less ready to exclaim: God! I thank thee that I am not as other men are! Hear the Lord calling them serpents; a generation of vipers, which cannot escape the damnation of hell. And what were they considered in their department among men? How were they distinguished then? How are they known now?
The Lord calls them Pharisees. Men unhumbled in their minds. Who never felt the plague of their own heart. Uncircumcised in heart and ears. They never tasted the wormwood and the gall of a fallen state. They never were pricked to the heart under the deep conviction of a fallen state. And not feeling the want of Christ; they utterly despised him.
Lord Jesus! keep my soul humble at the foot of thy cross. Every day, and all the day, may I learn the infinitely precious consolations of salvation as alone in thee, and more and more from a deep sense of the want of thee, be led to see and enjoy my complete interest in thee. And oh for grace like Paul, to count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: and to count all thingsВ· but dung, that I may win Christ and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ; the righteousness which is of God but faith. Oh! the blessedness that Christ is made of God to all his redeemed; wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, that he shall glorieth may glory in the Lord!