If, then, brethren, you would obtain an answer to the momentous question, Whether you shall be saved, whether there is a good hope that you are in the way of salvation, I would bid you not so much look back to your Baptism and Confirmation, and count the number of your attendances on Holy Communion, of the sermons you have heard, the prayers and praises you have offered—though these are all great things—but rather, I would say, ascertain whether you have present salvation, for the future depends on the present; and to ascertain this, examine well whether you are putting off the old man and putting on the new, as I have just described. As another test—and a very great help in godliness, to which there is no equal in feelings and exercises—inquire into your hope of future salvation (by which I do not mean only your expectation, but also your eager desire), and into your joy for present salvation. If religion is a reality, it is a great reality. Its immediate blessings are so precious, and its prospects so transcendently glorious, that the man who is not filled with joy and desire on their account, has no part or lot in them, or is strangely culpably ignorant of his privileges and his hopes. No wonder that he easily yields to sin, that he finds spiritual employments wearisome, that he makes no progress in salvation. If GOD touches him and he feels not, if heaven has come down to him and he knows it not, if glory is revealed to him, and he does not burn for it, if CHRIST has put him in the ark and he is not comforted by the immediate deliverance and counting on the perfect salvation—then, surely, he has received the grace of GOD to little sanctifying, and so to little saving purpose! O let him beseech GOD earnestly and perseveringly to give him spiritual sight and feeling, to fill him with joy and peace in believing, to make him rejoice, not only for what he has, but for what he expects of salvation; working, like St. Paul, in view of the crown laid up, confident that, whether absent or present, he is accepted by GOD, knowing that to depart is to be with CHRIST.