Till we are ready to perish we slight and despise the gospel - J.C. Philpot

But you will say, Is there not an easier way of learning the gospel
than this? No. Must we then be "ready to perish" before the
gospel saves us, and "outcasts" before the gospel takes us in?
Yes, surely; for we are so already. The gospel does not make us
so, but finds us so. This was the confession that the Lord himself
put into the mouth of the Israelite when he stood before the
altar. "A Syrian ready to perish was my father" Deut. 26:5). To
see and feel ourselves "ready to perish" is but to see and feel our
real condition. It is like a person ill of consumption learning for
the first time the nature of his disease. To tell him so does not
make him so. It is only making known to him a terrible secret.
Now would not such a sinking patient hail and embrace a
miraculous cure? And would he quarrel with the remedy because
it perfectly healed him without his first making himself a little
better? So with the gospel. It reveals a certain, an infallible
remedy; but till we are ready to perish we slight and despise it.