Southern Christian Advocate

DEDICATION TO GOD.

It was "not only the frequent, but the weekly, practice" of Hannah Hobbie, (as her private journal shows,) to renew the dedication of herself to God. Out of this practice, doubtless, grew much of the patience under suffering, the joy of faith, the zeal for the conversion of souls, the absorbing interest in the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom, which made her sick room, for four years, one of the high places of the triumphs of Divine grace. "As often as I feel myself constrained to dedicate myself anew to God," she wrote, "I never fail of receiving, so often, the blessing of peace and comfort to my soul."

Now, not a Christian duty is there, but the right performance of it implies the spirit of dedication to God. But what is suffered to lie in the soul as a latent implication, cannot answer the ends of its higher life. We have need to see the necessity of that spirit: to esteem it an indispensable condition and a signal token of Divine favor; to make its sincere, solemn exercise a matter of prime concern in our approaches to "the blood-bought mercy-seat." We have need that these convictions should stir and sway us: combining all the glow of an impulse with all the regularity of a habit; entering alike into what we feel most profoundly and what we perform most frequently.

When we realize this truth as Hannah Hobbie realized it: we too shall find that it unseals a never-failing fountain of "peace and comfort" to the soul. We shall rejoice in it; we shall grow by it. And perhaps, our lifelessness and cheerlessness in divine things, have no more prolific source than our delinquency at just this point: we do not renew our dedication to God as often and as earnestly as we should. How long has it been, reader, since, "of set purpose," with serious deliberation, and in fervor of spirit, you devoted yourself afresh to Him, from whom alone we can receive "blessings large as our desires, and lasting as our souls?" In what measure do you possess now the frame of mind necessary to this pious "exercise?" We beg you to put the matter to a decisive test. As you close the present article, renew your dedication to God--will you not?--with thanksgiving for the past, with supplication for preserving grace in time to come. If you cannot do so, oh bemoan your backslidden state; for--are you not a backslider?