believer_? If so, rejoice in your heirship; and yet rejoice with
trembling; for that is the very character of God's heirs. But are you
_unassured_--nay, _wholly unassured_? then what mad presumption to say
to your soul, that these promises, being in the Bible, must belong
indiscriminately to all! It is too gross a contradiction for you to
compass, except in word." He then shows that _Christ's free offer_
must be accepted by the sinner, and so the _promises_ become his.
"This sinner complies with the call or offer, 'Come unto me;' and
thereafter, but not before, can claim the annexed _promise_ as his: 'I
will give thee rest.'"

"_Aug. 14._--Partial fast, and seeking God's face by prayer. This day
thirty years, my late dear brother was born. Oh for more love, and
then will come more peace!" That same evening he wrote the hymn, "_The
Barren Fig-tree_."

"_Oct. 17._--Private meditation exchanged for conversation. Here is
the root of the evil,--forsake God, and He forsakes us."

Some evening this month he had been reading _Baxter's Call to the
Unconverted_. Deeply impressed with the affectionate and awfully
solemn urgency of the man of God, he wrote--

Though Baxter's lips have long in silence hung,
And death long hush'd that sinner-wakening tongue,
Yet still, though dead, he speaks aloud to all,
And from the grave still issues forth his "Call:"
Like some loud angel-voice from Zion hill,
The mighty echo rolls and rumbles still.
Oh grant that we, when sleeping in the dust,