THE POWER OF GOD TO SALVATION
"...and experience worketh hope." —Romans 5:4 [KJV] We are ever to consider the gospel as a proclamation of grace to rebels; a declaration of mercy to the profligate and abandoned; glad tidings of salvation to lost, desperate, hopeless sinners. It finds the soul destitute of any one encouraging symptom: it brings all hope and encouragement with it. When the gospel becomes the "power of God to salvation" to any sinner, it works a mighty change in his state and practice. In the sweet experience, proof, or the trial of this, the soul is comforted. Hope concerning his state is confirmed. Experience worketh hope of one's own interest in Jesus, and salvation by Him. It works not by legal terrors and dreadful horrors, as was Judas; nor by working up the animal passions to a flash of joy, just as the stony ground hearers were affected by the word. But it powerfully enlightens the soul to see the evil of sin, and the infinite preciousness of the Lord Jesus, so as t