Illustration of the Lack of Assurance

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To illustrate the lack of Christian assurance, the Rev. J. C. Ryle takes two English emigrants and supposes them set down side by side in the colony of New Zealand or Australia. He says:

“Give each of them a piece of land to clear and cultivate. Let the portions allotted to them be the same both in quantity and quality. Secure that land to them by every needful legal instrument; let it be conveyed as freehold to them and theirs forever; let the conveyance be publicly registered, and the property made sure to them by every deed and security that man’s ingenuity can devise.

“Suppose then that one of them shall set to work to bring his land into cultivation, and labor at it day after day without intermission or cessation. Suppose in the meantime that the other be continually leaving his work, and going repeatedly to the public registry, to ask whether the land is really his own, whether there is not some mistake—whether, after all, there is not some flaw in the legal instrument which conveyed it to him. The one shall never doubt his title, but just work diligently on. The other shall hardly ever feel sure of his title, and spend half his time in going to Sydney or Auckland with needless inquiries about it. Which now of these men will have made most progress in a year’s time? Who will have done the most for his land, got the greatest breadth of soil under tillage, have the best crops to show, be altogether the most prosperous?”

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