One Nail Drives Out Another

“Men will not be frightened from self-love; it must be another more powerftil love which inust draw them from it; as one nail driveth out a?totherP This is true philosophy. Love to God can alone expel the love of sin. Many forget this, and set to work extracting the old love: a very tedious task; impossible, indeed, with such poor tools as we possess. They torture the body and torment the mind, but the old nail of self-love is rusted in, and will not stir. They might sooner break up the fabric of their manhood than tear out its old deep-seated affections; the self-nail has been driven well home, and clinched besides, and what can we do .?

It is wonderful to see how love to Christ fetches out the love of self from its lodging. At the first it shakes and loosens it; by-and-by it drives it a little from its place, and at last it drives it out altogether. Self is at first somewhat denied, then it is chastened and kept under, and finally it is crucified with Christ so completely that the man finds pleasure in warring against it, and glories in the submission of the flesh to suffering and loss.

O blessed hand of Jesus, drive in the nail of divine love! Smite hard. Lord. Force out the rusted iron of my selfishness. Let not a fragment of it remain. Love alone can vanquish love. Thyself alone can conquer self in me. No secondary force will suffice. My God, thou must display thy Godhead’s power of love, or my vile heart will never part with self.