which will not only speak in favor of God and Holiness while you live, but shall
this, my Comrades? It is because you believed he was a Holy man. You admired his self-sacrificing life. You felt that he had a Pure Heart.
There is another inducement which should lead you to seek a Pure Heart, and that is, because it will bring you into the possession of a good hope. This is a precious treasure. To feel that whatever clouds may darken the sky, or whatever sorrows may sweep over your soul, there is good ground for anticipating peace, and joy and victory in the future, must be a precious and desirable thing.
A Soldier who knows that he sincerely loves God, and that he is living in obedience to Him, has an inward assurance that God will care for him, whatever troubles may arise. Whereas one who feels that he has malice, hatred, pride, love of the world, and other wrongs hidden away in his secret soul, and who knows that he is daily neglecting his duty to his family or to himself, to his Corps, or the poor sinners around him, can no more have a bright hope that God is going to make him a happy future, than the sinners can expect that they are going to have Heaven at the end of a sinful life. He may hope for it, but it will be like the hope of the hypocrite, certain to be destroyed
But when the soul has the witness of the Spirit and of a consistent life, to the possession of inward Purity, it can look forward with confidence to victory over every foe, deliverance out of every sorrow, and in the end, glory and honor, immortality and eternal life.
Have these blessed experiences any charm for you, my Comrades? Let me review them. I think they are entrancing.
1. There is the Holy Life that will always be the outcome of a Holy Heart. If the fountain spring is pure, the flowing waters of daily life and action will be pure also.
2. There is the peace of God that passeth all under standing, which is ever associated with inward Holiness. "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt." Any evil left in the soul must make trouble. Purity and Peace are bound together by God Himself.
3. There is the presence and the indwelling of God as a flame of Holy Love, which is the strength and spirit of Holiness. This is the Fiery Baptism which burns up hatred, and grudges, and self-seeking, and self-will, and purifies all our motives and affections.
4. There is the useful life and the Holy Example that flow from a Pure Heart, which will not only speak in favor of God and Holiness while you live, but shall go on influencing the world long after you have passed to your reward in the skies.