Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.
What a rich thought is contained in those words of Jesus concerning his Church. In his eye the Church is not only fair but spotless. So that, Reader, while, God's dear children are mourning over the innumerable errors they feel in themselves, and under which they daily groan being burthened: in the view of Jesus as washed in his blood, and clothed in his righteousness, they are without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. Jesus having presented them to himself as without blame before him in love. Ephesians 5:27. Reader! how blessed the thought that Jesus and his Church, Jesus and his people, in the sight of God the Father are one. And though the followers of the Lord feel the sad consequences daily of a fallen nature, and cry out under it through manifold, and as they sometimes think, increasing infirmities; yet it is in Jesus they are beheld, and their whole acceptance ariseth, not from what they are in themselves, but from what they are in the beloved.