Special Mercy of a Covenant God

Few, perhaps, have felt more heart-rending, in the workings of the natural conscience, that I have. I was in that terrible state for years and when alone, I expected hell to open and let me in. I thought the devil was ready to drag me to hell. I verily believed that this was all nature. But when God the Spirit came and manifested sin in my conscience and opened a little of the mystery of iniquity, I have found that all my nature and practice had been nothing less than one constant heaving up of rebellion against the Holy, Just and Good God. And there I was, with all my sin and guilt torturing my mind, feeling as an accountable being to the Holy God, Whose Mercy I had abhorred, Whose goodness I had despised. If the Blessed Spirit had not loved me with a Peculiar Love, He would never have taken so many pains with so hard-hearted and vile youth as I was. NO! He would have said, ‘Let him alone, let him seal his own damnation and reap the wages due to his sin.’ But O, the Mercy, the Special Mercy and Love of our Covenant God! When the time came, He arrested me, broke my heart, brought me to stand and bow before His throne as a guilty criminal and brought me to sign my own death warrant. I felt that God had a right to damn me. I had nothing to offer and I could do nothing to save myself…But O! God’s Peculiar Love that was shed abroad in my heart by His Blessed Spirit which brought me to feel the love and blood of Christ and led me to trace something of the wondrous work of His Wonder-working Grace.