Who Makes You to Differ?

Permit me to ask my dear sister – who taught you that you were miserable, wretched, blind and naked, sin-ruined and law-condemned and must perish forever without a saving interest in Precious Jesus? Who showed you the worth of your immortal soul, that if your soul was safe for eternity, it did not much matter how things were as to your body, during this momentary state of your little inch of time? Who gave you such a high esteem of Christ, the Friend of sinners?

Have you always had such a living sensation of these things? If not, how did you come by this? Who gave it to you? Who makes you differ from thousands, on your right hand and on your left, who, insensible of their own misery as sinners and of the excellency of Christ as the Savior, seek no higher happiness than the empty enjoyments of this perishing life?

Oh, dear sister, have not you cause to adore the rich, free, distinguishing Grace of God to you – which opened your eyes, while numbers round about you are blinded by sin and Satan? You have seen your unspeakable misery without Christ and His immense and eternal excellency to make you incomparably happy unto endless glory! You have been drawn by His all-conquering love and changed in some measure into His image and have given yourself up to Him, to be entirely and forever His. The altogether lovely Jesus is your Beloved and He is your Friend – and in Him you have and shall have, a well of life and ocean of inexhaustible and eternal bliss! “By the grace of God I am what I am…” (1 Cor. 15:10)

Letters of Ann Dutton