ship with God in Eden; he talked and walked with God; but the devil came and cast a darksome pall of sin over his soul, and left man a heap of woe. But God comes into the scene as He did to Cain, over whose dark ways He cast unwelcome light, and said, as it were, "Let there be light," and the light, in a sense, is all around our darkness; you cannot divest yourself of that light, and if you are lost, you will carry that light down with you into the pit of darkness. Said our talented but melancholy bard, "I wish I were a dog!" And said Colonel Gardiner in his unconverted days, "I would give all I have to be my dog." Why? because they both knew too much to be happy. Oh, sinner! that is how it is with you; you know enough to make you miserable even here; but when in hell your knowledge, your memories of truth, like so many harpies of evil, will cluster round you, and with their infernal claws will drag you down, down, down, into an abyss without a bottom. Alas, yes; as you go down, down, into that bottomless abyss, you will carry all your knowledge, all your memories of truth with you; your light will never leave you, but will render visible and awful the darkness round you; for the bitterest drops in all your bitter cup will be, that you heard of a hell, but refused to believe it; and of a God, but scorned to know Him; and of the love of Jesus, but it was to you as an idle song. Ah, you cannot be an idiot in hell; you cannot be a lunatic in hell-cannot say, "I am not responsible;" or, "My mind is touched." No, no; there is no such thing as a mind touched, or a lunatic asylum, in hell; no! your memory, your mind will be your bitterest scourge there.

Dear, dear people, you who are unsaved, if I were you I think I would reason something like this: "Well, if I cannot divest myself of my knowledge or my conviction, what best can I do ?" You know you have convictions. How do I know that you have convictions?

Why, because you are as I was. We are all from one fallen ancestry, of one moral image, as lost sinners before God. Though the harbour waters of our natures seem still and dead, yet is there felt the throb of that storm outside which is raging on the eternal ocean of a sinner's last doom. I can testify I never remember a time when I was without my convictions; I knew, when a child, that if I died I should be lost. I had been told that God was love, that God loved sinners, but I was conscious I did not believe it, and that if I died I should be lost. Ah, dear sinner, thou knowest thou hast convictions, thou knowest, sitting on that seat this morning, that the impress of eternity is on thee. Now I bid thee to the supper. I bid thee to the provision God has made. Wilt thou give the preference to thy pleasure, and thy business, and turn a deaf ear till it is too late, too late, and thou art lost for all eternity? Ah, no, thou wilt not! Thou wilt come at the divine bidding. Let thy convictions bring thee to Christ. This is our one want to-day, that thou shouldest come.

Now I would say a word to you who believe all this; you know you are lost, and say you are wretched. Well, I would reason with you. Here is the Gospel. What is the Gospel? Not that you must love God, but that God loves you; not that you must first seek Jesus, but that Jesus is seeking you. If I were in your stead, I would conclude with myself thus

"Well, the Gospel is for lost sinners; I am a lost sinner, so the Gospel is for me. The Gospel is good news to the sinner; I am a sinner, it is good news to me. The Gospel is the good news of God to the sinner; I am a sinner, and the Gospel brings good news of God; yes, of God to me."

Óh, that I could make it plain: it is a great thing to get the right handle of a truth-clearly to see the Gospel; and to lay hold of it. Else will it only condemn, and be a savour of death unto death. Oh! see to it, that

you lay hold on eternal life! One man goes to use a scythe, but he takes it by the blade and cuts himself; another goes to fight, but he seizes the sword by its edge, and wounds himself. Thus is it with the Gospel. The Gospel, unless it be believed as the Gospel of God, may be known only to condemn. God's Gospel is just such as you need. Ha! it makes one happy only to think of the good news of God to us, poor helldeserving sinners. Now, here, in the word, is the Gospel. "God was in Christ"-doing what? Judging the world? condemning_the_world? Nay, though if the world goes on rejecting Jesus there must be judgment; but "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." I shall never forget, when personally anxious, reading that 2 Cor. v. 19, where it is said, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; but hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation." If this be true, God is reconciled, and is not now imputing unto us our trespasses, having imputed them to Him who bore them upon the cross-who died to make atonement for them, who put them away by the sacrifice of Himself. Hence I repeat it, God is reconciled; He does not want to be reconciled, He only wants me to be reconciled-shows me the cross, where I see His love manifested, in the gift of His Son, who died the death due to me; but because of which death I may live. Let me explain. I go into court, where I have to meet one to whom I owe a large sum of money. It must be paid, or I must suffer; but I cannot pay it; and now I am in court; and the sentence is, that the money must be paid on a given day. I leave the court, but I cannot pay it, and so I abscond from the country, I fly to the antipodes, anywhere to get away from justice; but the person to whom I owe the money has devised a plan whereby, through another, he may receive the debt, and now can say, "Go after him into the land of his

exile, seek him out, tell him the debt is paid, and that for the rest of his life I and the law are reconciled towards him. Tell him that he may return in peace, that no idea of a policeman, with his hand on his shoulder, need haunt or harass him; go, seek him out, go to the antipodes, go into all the world, tell him he is free." The creditor is reconciled to me, and all that I, the debtor, want is, simply to know it, and, on knowing it, to be reconciled to him, and in relation to him to have perfect peace.

You understand me: as long as the sinner says the doom which is due to my sins must be paid, and I cannot pay it, he will only get away from God as far as he can; in fact, he would rather not think of it, but go to his sports and his games, to his follies and his sins, being only happy when he can banish the thought. God devised a plan, God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. The Son of God came down in the person of Jesus, took my sorrows, my sufferings, my sicknesses; what is more, He took my sin; and, like the man who came into court, when he saw the debt, laid down the money. Here is the Gospel, "The Lord laid down His life for us, died the just for the unjust. He was wounded for our transgressions, was bruised for our iniquities; the Lord laid on him the iniquities of us all." The debt was thus paid; "the price of pardon was his blood," and He laid it down, He bore our sins on the accursed tree, "was delivered for our offences"-sins-carried them down with Him into the grave, where, so to speak, they now are lost, buried, forgotten; for, in virtue of the death upon the tree for sin, God says, "I have cast thy sins behind my back." Christ, who bore them to His grave, rose without them. He is without sin before God for us. And as He stands there for us, the sins truly are "behind his back," being down in that heart of the earth, where for us the Divine Surety

left them. And now, with the debt paid, and the Surety accepted in heaven, having gone in with His completed work, the message to the sinner is, that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." Not that I am not a sinner; not that I have not sinned; the debtor in the far land could never deny that the debt was his; but he could say that another had taken the debt: so with us. We have sinned; but the Lord laid on Him (Jesus) the iniquities of us all. God, on the cross, was imputing our sins to Him, so reconciling us to Himself.

And now you say, What must I do to be saved? We reply, believe this message of God. You say, Is that all? for that surely is a very little thing to have to do. What! a little thing for the Son of God to die? a little thing to take your sin? But you say, It is an easy thing, then, to be saved! Nay; not easy. I will suppose that I am at the antipodes, and that one comes to me and says, "You remember the debt you owed ?" I say, "Yes;" and he says, "That debt has been paid." What now do I say? Do I say, "Oh, that is an easy matter, or it is too simple?" No, indeed; not so simple-but vast! singular! wonderful! I ask, Is it really true? I question my informant. If he be true, I am saved. Thus, beloved, may you identify me as a true witness. Oh! do identify me as a true witness for God; go to the book of God, and see that the Son of God did come down here for sinners; that He died. Observe, He did not deserve to die. He never did a wrong thing; He was God's own Son; He never broke a law. Why, then, did He die? Because He took the place of the guilty; and as God did not spare Him who took the place of the guilty, it was that He might save us who are guilty. Judgment for sin on the cross has been given, and is past it would be unjust to ask for it twice; that is, once at