What could be more suited to a man full of sin than a Savior full of grace? Surely nothing and no one. Though that blessed Savior was full of truth likewise, and truth puts everything and everyone in the right place, yet the grace was amply sufficient to meet all the need which the truth revealed. Hence, although the poor convicted sinner cries out, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” he nevertheless feels that the only place for him is “at Jesus’ knees.”

It is ever thus in cases of true conviction. In every instance in which the genuine work of God’s Spirit is worked in the soul, we notice what we have called this strange yet lovely inconsistency, this seeming contradiction, the striking phenomenon of a sinner confessing his utter unfitness to be in the presence of a holy God, and yet having a certain inward consciousness that it is the only place he can be in.

This is very beautiful and touchingly interesting. It is the sure evidence of the work of God in the soul. There is the profound sense of sinfulness and guilt and yet that marvelous and mysterious clinging of the heart to the One whose moral glory has humbled us in the dust. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” But where were these glowing words said? At the knees of a Savior-God. Blessed place! Did Peter imagine that Jesus was going to depart from him? Did he really think that the gracious One who had deigned to make use of his ship and then given him such a miraculous catch of fish, would leave him in the depth of his misery? We do not and cannot believe it. Ah! no; the Spirit of God always combines these two elements, the consciousness of utter unworthiness and an earnest clinging to and breathing after Christ. In short, it is the need created and the object revealed.