Chapter 11: Bound to Know Your True Character contact with the living reality of a sinner, reason with him, exhort him, find out his cavils, his obstinacy, his insincerity, pray with him if you can. You cannot do this without waking up emotions in your mind, and if you are a Christian, it will wake up such mingled emotions of grief, compassion and indignation, as Jesus Christ feels, and as will leave you no room to doubt what is the state of your heart on this subject. Bring your mind in contact with sinners, and fix it there, and rely on it you will feel.
4. You want to prove the state of your mind towards God.
Fix your thoughts intently on God. And do not set yourselves down to imagine a God after your own foolish hearts, but take the Bible and learn there what is the true idea of God.
Do not fancy a shape or appearance, or imagine how he looks, but fix your mind on the Bible description of how he feels and what he does, and what he says, and you cannot but feel. Here you will detect the real state of your heart. Nay, this will constitute the real state of your heart, which you cannot mistake.
5. Test your feelings towards Christ.
You are bound to know whether you love the Lord Jesus Christ or not. Run over the circumstances of his life, and see whether they appear as realities to your mind, his miracles, his sufferings, his lovely character, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his intercession now at the right hand of the throne of God. Do you believe all these? Are they realities to your mind? What are your feelings in view of them? When you think of his willingness to save, his ability to save, his atoning death, his power, if these things are realities to you, you will have feelings of which you will be conscious, and concerning which there will be no mistake.
6. What are your feelings towards the saints.
If you wish to test your heart on this point, whether you love the saints, do not let your thoughts run to the ends of the earth, but fix your mind on the saints by you and see whether you love them, whether you desire their sanctification, whether you really long to have them grow in grace, whether you can bear them in your heart to the throne of grace in faith, and ask God to bestow blessings on them.
7. So in regard to revivals.
You wish to know what is the state of your feelings towards revivals, then read about them, think of them, fix your mind on them, and you cannot but have feelings that will evince the state of your heart. The same is true of the heathen, of the slaves, of drunkards, of the Bible, of any object of pious regard. The only way to know the state of your heart is to fix your mind on the reality of those things, till you feel so intensely that there is no mistaking the nature of your feelings.
Should you find a difficulty in attending to any of these objects sufficiently to produce feeling, it is owing to one of two reasons, either your mind is taken up with some other parts of religion, so as not to allow of such fixed attention to the specified object, or your thought