From God's Way of Peace, by Horatius Bonar
No confidence in the flesh must be our motto, as it is the foundation of God’s gospel.
Do not keep back from Christ under the idea that you must come to him in a disinterested frame, and from an unselfish motive. If you were right in this thing, who could be saved? You are to come as you are; with all your bad motives, whatever these may be.
Faith does not spring out of feeling, but feeling out of faith.
Your acquisition of feeling would not qualify you for it, nor bring it nearer, nor buy its blessings, nor make you more welcome, nor persuade God to do anything for you that he is not at this moment most willing to do.
The peace of conscience thus secured will be trial-proof, sickness-proof, deathbed-proof, judgment-proof.
That which makes it safe for you to draw near to God, and right for God to receive you, must be something altogether away from and independent of yourself; for, yourself and everything pertaining to yourself God has already condemned; and no condemned thing can give you any warrant for going to him, or hoping for acceptance.
This is man’s day, when man’s judgments prevail; but God’s day is coming, when the case shall be strictly tried upon its real merits.
Your strength, as well as your righteousness, is in another; yet, while you admit the former, you deny the latter.
Love led him down to the cradle; love led him up to the cross!
The conscience is satisfied. It feels that God’s grace is righteous grace, that his love is holy love. There it rests.
He is too loving to say anything needlessly severe; too true to say anything untrue; nor can he have any motive to misrepresent us; for he loves to tell of the good, not of the evil, that may be found in any of the works of his hands.
Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ will do everything for us; believing in our own faith, or trusting in our own trust, will do nothing.
The gospel is not a list of duties to be performed, or feelings to be produced, or frames which we are to pray ourselves into, in order to make God think well of us, and in order to fit us for receiving pardon.
Unbelief, then, is the belief of a lie and the rejection of the truth.
Each of these words of grace is like a star sparkling in the round, blue sky above us; or like a well of water pouring out its freshness amid desert rocks and sands.
Election has helped many a soul to heaven; but never yet hindered one.
In all unbelief there are these two things, - a good opinion of one’s self, and a bad opinion of God. So long as these two things exist, it is impossible for an inquirer to find rest.
If Christ be not the Substitute, he is nothing to the sinner.
Believing is not a work, but a ceasing from work.
The knowledge of that finished work is immediate peace.
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