I have never wept so much for sin as I have done lately. Often have I put up the prayer, ‘Search me, O God’. The Lord has heard and answered it; and oh, if it had not been that the fountain was still open, I would have sunk into unutterable despair. He has ploughed up the fallow ground afresh of my poor heart, and the view presented has prostrated me in the dust. If ever I felt what a broken heart and a contrite spirit was, I have of late. Oh, the evil that is there covered over by the rank weeds of ‘self love’, self complacency, or self in some hideous form or other, that is not discernible until the Holy Spirit makes it known. He is pleased to show us enough to make us cling closer to the cross, to make Jesus more precious, and sin more hateful. But while I have thus been led of late to mourn so much for sin, I have never felt pardon so abundantly manifested. Oh, keep close to the cross!

I see myself more and more, every hour, a poor sinner, unworthy of the least crumb that falls from the Master’s table. But I see, at the same time, Jesus a great Savior, divinely able, and most lovingly willing, to save the chief of sinners, even me. No one can tell how this thought fills my heart with contrition, and my eyes with tears.