2 Chronicles 26:23

REFLECTIONS

HERE would I meditate over the wretched, ruined, and undone state of Uzziah. A leper to his grave. Cast out and forsaken both of God and man. Loathsome in the sight of both; and living and dying universally unpitied, unhelped, and unreclaimed. And are there any Uzziah's of the present hour? Do any count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and do despite to the Spirit of grace! how desperately lost to a real sense of their own state by nature? How totally unconscious of the infinitely precious value of the blood of Jesus; how wretchedly mistaken as to their own filth, corruption, lusts, and universal depravity. What strangers to themselves, to Jesus, to the necessity of the work of God upon the soul, and the absolute expediency of being washed from the leprosy of sin in the blood of Christ! blessed, thrice blessed God, who in mercy led me to see the preciousness of salvation, and as graciously led me to seek it in the way the Lord himself appointed. Never, blessed Jesus, may my soul invade thy office, but rejoice to come under the censer of thy righteousness. Oh! give me to see that I am indeed sheltered from the wrath to come, from the leprosy of this life, and the miseries of another, being found in thee and under thy precious all-atoning sacrifice, whereby thou hast forever done away the sin and uncleanness of thy people.