The Gospel is the Fittest Tool for Godliness

Over at The Next Reformation I found Thomas Chalmers' classic sermon, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. This is a beautiful document. I highly recommend that you not only read it, but meditate on the truths you find there. Here's a taste:

Salvation by grace--salvation by free grace--salvation not of works, salvation on such a footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the hand of justice, than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and weight of ungodliness. Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the Gospel, and we raise a topic of distrust between man and God. We take away the power of the Gospel to melt and conciliate. For this purpose, the freer it is the better it is.... Along with the light of a free Gospel, does there enter the love of the Gospel, which, in proportion as we impair the freeness, we are sure to chase away. And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation, as when under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny ungodliness. To do any work in the best manner, we should make use of the fittest tools for it