dissatisfied. Some men in other ages tried to satisfy it for a little, as poor Martin Luther did. Ever as he felt conscience disturbed, he tried penances and bodily mortifications the most severe; but according to his own declaration, they did not go deep enough to give him peace. Others have fled to the cell of the monk, and the solitude of the anchorite; but they have found there only retirement from mankind, without retirement from their sins, or obtaining repose of conscience. Others have been absolved by priests, and have received indulgences from popes; but they have found in all this a mere temporary repose. There is no peace that will bear the shock, the wear, the tear of this world, until we can lift up our glad hearts beyond the everlasting hills, and feel that the God that made all is our Father, and that his dwelling-place is our everlasting and blessed home. With that assurance in my heart and in my conscience, I have peace. But how am I to reach this? In this way. As my conscience condemns, and I feel I have broken a holy law, I read that Jesus suffered for me-that my sins were laid on him, that he bore my transgressions, that he endured my punishment, that by his stripes I am healed, that the chastisement of my peace was upon him, and I have redemption through his blood; and when I read all this, I see the light of a holy law; but I see also, what gives peace to my conscience, that God has punished my sins in my substitute, and cannot punish them twice by punishing them in me also; if he has accepted a righteousness for me, he cannot exact another righteousness to be a title to heaven from me. When I see that Christ endured my sins, exhausted my curse, that he obeyed the law that I could not obey, that he has secured

heaven for me, that he has suffered all that I have deserved as a sinner, that he has paid all that I owed as a creature my conscience is satisfied; and justified by faith, and redeemed through blood, my conscience has peace with God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let me view this redemption through blood-this atonement-in relation to sin. God did not make sin. I know it is very easy to say, Then who made it? That is another question; but God never made sin; God never meant man to suffer, to weep, to have headaches, to die; and whatever source these things came from, they came not from God. He made everything that is beautiful, but he did not make sin. A collect in the English Prayer-book expresses this; "O God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made." I do not believe God hates anything that he has made: he so loves the creature that he would do anything to save that creature, except violate his own holy law; and he so loved his creature, and yet he so stood by his law, that he gave his Son, that he might redeem that creature by his blood, and magnify his law while he did so. But some have said, If you leave sin to itself, it will exhaust itself. They say it is like pestilence and fever, which are often found in the course of years to exhaust themselves, or, to use a popular expression, to die out. They say that the human race will become better and better, till, like the shining sun, it breaks into millennial light. Turn to the history of the human race; do you find that nations left to themselves become better? Do we not find that wherever a nation rises nearest to culminating greatness, it is under the inspiration and direction of the gospel of Christ Jesus? Do you not find that wherever there is one patch of

sunshine in broad Europe, it is from the Sun of Righteousness-that wherever a desert rejoices, or a solitary place blossoms as the rose, it indicates its affinity with the skies. Man, left to himself, would utterly perish in his sins. If he makes progress, it is not because sin exhausts itself, but because grace sustains, strengthens, and sanctifies. The history of man without the gospel is that of ceaselessly sinning, and ceaselessly suffering; the nature of the sin may vary, but the virus of the sin still remains. The man that is a drunkard may lay aside his drunkenness, but if his heart is not changed, the fountain within him will break out in some other shape; there must be the inner change of heart, this fountain must be made pure, before its currents can be made so. I can see in Christ's sufferings my sin expiated, my pardon free, and feel sin to be more hateful because it cost so much as Calvary represents to expiate it. While my sins are pardoned through Christ's blood, the sorrow of that cross makes me hate the sin that dragged the Saviour down. I am sanctified by the application of this truth to the heart by the Holy Spirit, as well as pardoned. But I see more in Christ's sufferings than this. Were this all that the cross teaches us, it would be a very cold thing, even at the best; but I see in Christ's blood not simply a way of escape provided for me, but I see in his sufferings the evidence of my Father's intense love to me. That makes a very great difference. I see in the blood of Christ, not merely a legal proviso for the legal escape of criminals, but the expression of paternal love unfolding itself in suffering, in agony, in order to reinstate me, a stray prodigal, in my right relationship to my heavenly

Father. It would not satisfy me to learn from Christ's cross that God now can save me; I must learn that he delights to save me. It would not satisfy me to find out from Christ's cross that God will now let me go, just as a prison lets a criminal go when he has exhausted his sentence, or as a judge lets a prisoner go when he knows him to be guilty, but cannot prove his guilt, that would not satisfy me; I cannot rest with merely being let go, I wish to be taken home; I want, not only to escape the penalty I have incurred, but to enjoy, in all the amplitude of paternal love, the pleasures that are in store in the presence of my heavenly Father; I want, not only to be cleansed from my sins, but to be taken to the bosom of a loving Father.

I find in the cross of Christ, not a plan for letting me legally escape, but a plan showing me also that God waits to receive me, longs to bless me, and that when I go home there will be prepared for me, not punishment, but a joyous festival-not a cold acquiescence in my escape from hell, and in my narrow admission into heaven, but the joyous song, "This my son was lost and is found, was dead, and is alive again; let us rejoice, and make merry.' I feel that it would not be enough for me to be admitted into heaven-I would not accept heaven as a tolerated inhabitant,—as merely having legally escaped, and legally got there; I must not only be tolerated, but welcome; I must not only escape, but be joyfully accepted; I must see in God, not a legislator who suffers me to be there, but my Father and my God, who welcomes me, and rejoices that I am there. Christ's precious blood is a proof to me of all this. The cross of Christ is almost as precious for what it expresses, as for what it conveys. It

conveys to me a love that can forgive me, and that could not be conveyed to me otherwise, because the law stood in the way; but it also proves to me that God sent his Son to die for me, because he loved me. It is a very wrong notion that God loves us because Christ died for us; that would be as if God were constrained to let a criminal into heaven, because Christ had paid the price. Such is not the record. The record is, "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son." Christ's death was not the cause of God's love, but the expression of God's love; it was not to create a love that did not exist, but to convey to me a love that was there in all its infinitude, and that God might, consistently with his justice, save, and pardon, and ransom the chiefest of sinners.

Thus, then, we have seen how Christ's sufferings relate to or bear upon our salvation and acceptance. He through whose blood the atonement has been made is not a mere creature-he that was thus rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, must be, in order to do what I have endeavoured to show, more than a mere man. First, he must make atonement for every fraction of a broken law. If he should leave one single clause unsatisfied, all would be worthless, because it would contradict the words, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the law." It would show that perfect obedience is not absolutely necessary-it would suggest the question, Why did Adam suffer for one solitary sin? it would suggest another, Why did angels fall because of one transgression? We must have a saviour who fulfils all righteousness, and who ends all sin, and exhausts all its penalty completely, perfectly, or he can