Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/228

228THE HALLIG.

pel. Their good works are, perhaps, not more numerous
than those of such as despise salvation through Christ,
but they know that these works are without merit, and
without righteousness, and do not esteem themselves on
their account, rather confessing with all humility how
far they are behind the example of their Lord. Per-
haps they are not stronger to withstand temptation than
others, but they feel their unworthiness, and returning
in sorrow and repentance, they mourn over their own sin-
fulness. So then, though externally they differ little
from others, within they are wholly unlike. Here is
humility, there pride. Here a mourning for lack of
righteousness, and an ever-growing consciousness of
needing a Redeemer ; there, careless excuses, thought-
lessness, and reliance on what they call "a good heart,"
and upon the few laudable efforts to satisfy the de-
mands of the divine law.
  We say that few gain more than this from their faith
in the Gospel, and yet they will confess that even this is
of infinite value. Still, far be it from us to offer any
excuse for this half victory; we would rather point to
that perfection after which we must strive with prayers
and entreaties, with sighs and tears, with watchings and
struggles, with carefulness and hope ; the entire renew-
ing of the spirit of our minds, that illumination of the
inward man which is reflected in every thought and
every feeling, in every word and every work ; which ban-
ishes every unholy emotion, every worldly desire, as
cloud and shadow fly before the sun ; that new birth
by which the natural man is transformed to a child of
God, and the life on earth to a life in heaven, so that the
world itself becomes a new creation, the joys and the