Jesus, in His person, His character, and His work,—the more we know of our own hearts, and discover the exceeding sinfulness of our ruined nature, and the more we see of the perfect adaptation to our utmost wants of the Divine salvation wrought out for us in Christ Jesus,—so much the more shall we know of mercy. Every day in the believer’s life brings with it a fresh lesson in mercy, and every prayer that we pray to a reconciled Father should bring home to us with fresh power the deep debt we owe to mercy. And now you see in a moment how it is that there should be a continued and constantly repeated renewal of self-consecration. Every fresh discovery of mercy should lead at once to fresh surrender. If you are looking on mercy as some distant thing, which you have often heard of and wish to reach, but cannot, I see not, for my part, how it should have any great power over your life; for, though it looks very beautiful, you cannot say that it has brought any benefit to you. If you have never felt your own deep need of it, and never learned your utter ruin, and have therefore never realised your condemnation before God, I see not how the tidings of mercy should have any great power upon you, for no man really cares for the remedy until he has been taught by God’s Spirit to feel his need. But if you have discovered yourself to be utterly and hopelessly lost, condemned alike by your own conscience and by the law of God; and if in the midst of your ruin you have, by God’s rich love in Christ Jesus, ‘obtained mercy;’ if you can look on His mercy in having redeemed you by His blood, in having called you by His Spirit, in having saved you by His grace, in having given you a blessed hope of His everlasting kingdom,—then indeed I cannot doubt that God has long since called you to a real consecration to His service. But if this be so, and if God has since been bringing you to a deeper sense of sin, and at the same time opening your heart to understand more of His mercy; if He is step by step making manifest to you ‘the depth, and length, and breadth, and height,’ and causing you to ‘know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge:’ then I can see very clearly that all past consecration must appear to your own heart as nothing, and that, ‘forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before,’ you will be ready again to kneel down at His feet, and with fresh love and fresh thanksgiving, yield yourselves afresh to Him, to be His, and His for ever. You may have long since given yourself to the Lord; but if you are this day really permitted ‘to feed on Him—in your heart—by faith—with thanksgiving, you will be prepared to kneel down afterwards and say, ‘Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.’ PRAYER. ‘I am Thine, save me; for I have sought Thy precepts.’—PSALM cxix. 94.