Heart Plagues Cured.

Finally, let me speak briefly of the cure of heart plagues.  As the discovery of heart plagues may be effected by examining the life and character of Christ, the cure of them will be found in His death.  It is the death of Christ alone that has virtue in it to heal our plagues, to mortify and slay our lusts.  All of our resolutions, our wise plans of doing battle with and expelling our plagues will never succeed unless we bring them continually to the cross of Christ.  WE MUST HAVE BELIEVING COMMUNION WITH A CRUCIFIED AND RISEN SAVIOR IF WE ARE TO MORTIFY THE DEEDS OF THE BODY, TO CRUCIFY THE FLESH WITH ITS AFFECTIONS AND LUST.  without this, we may change one lust for another, but we will never rightly mortify or vanquish any!  Christ gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity.  There is a secret virtue in His Blood, received by faith alone, which powerfully destroys the energy of every plague and sinful habit.  Our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.  Engrafted into His death, we become dead to sin and sin no longer reigns in our mortal bodies, that we should obey it in the lusts thereof.  Whatever heart plague you have discovered, bring it to the cross of Christ.  Despite all deceitful efforts it may make to escape the fiery ordeal, compel it to face and confront the cross of Christ.  Tie it down under the power of the sacrifice and death of Christ.  And if the Holy Ghost has indeed enabled you to come to the cross and look there for healing, as the Israelites looked to the fiery serpent, and if He enables you there to hold up your plagues to the searching holy light of dying love and dreadful expiation, you will find that under it they wither into the powerlessness of shame, and you arise to the energy of holy hatred against them.  While nailing them to the cross BY FAITH, in new-born loathing of the evil they do to the love of Jesus, you will feel that, in washing your heart from their pollution in the fountain that flows from the wounds of Him Who was crucified for these hated sins, you rise to renew your warfare against them as one refreshed with wine.  Bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, the Life also of Jesus will be made manifest in your mortal body