The Rock of Salvation

Romans iii. 25 — 26.

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this lime his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.

These are important words, my friends, which we have before us. They form a ground-work and a principal pillar, which upholds the most essential article of the Christian faith. I know of no passage in the whole of Holy Writ which is of more importance in order to a clear, correct, and complete apprehension of the Scriptural doctrine of the atonement, than this. It may certainly not appear to you, at first sight, that such is the case; and it is remarkable, that for several centuries this passage continued in the church as if sealed up, and under lock and key. It is true, tLat in former times it might have been less necessary in the Christian church than it is in the present day. With respect to the manner in which Christ accomplished the reconciliation between God and the sinner, there was only one opinion and one doctrine; it was preached in every pulpit, and was the general confession, and whoever deviated from it, would not, with his heresy, have escaped the tribunal of the church. In the present day, the case is otherwise. Many views of the work of atonement are become current, which deviate from the doctrine of the church — views, which all tend to divest the doctrine of the cross of its foolishness, and to bring it somewhat nearer to human ideas and rational comprehension. But it is in its foolishness that the peculiar sweetness of the doctrine of the atonement lies concealed; therefore we will not suffer ourselves, on any account, to be deprived of this foolishness.

In the passage we have read, there lies a gigantic sword against these false and derogatory views of the doctrine of the cross, which overturns them all; and it shall be the object of our present meditation briefly to expound it according to its original meaning. Our discourse will attain a two-fold aim: first, as a preparatory discourse for the passion-week, it will elevate us to the only correct point of view, from whence we ought to contemplate the whole history of our Lord’s passion; and secondly, as a monitory discourse, it will display to the sinners amongst us, who have no Saviour, that throne which burns with flames of fire, and if it please God, kindle in their soul a salutary dread — not indeed to urge them to despair, but to a godly sorrow. We consider Christ crucified,

I. As THE PROPITIATION;
II. As THE MANIFEST PROOF OF THE
RIGHTEOUSNESS OF God;

III. As THE SOLUTION OF THE GREATEST
PROBLEM IN THE AVORLD.

I. The chapter from which our text is taken, contains a powerful discourse on the righteousness which is by faith. Amongst other things it is said, “But now the righteousness which is by faith of Jesus Christ, is unto all, and upon all them that believe — for there is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; hence they are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Of this redemption the Apostle goes on to speak in our text, and tells ns, first of all, that “God has set forth Jesus Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.” Some are of opinion that the Apostle here alludes to the ark of the covenant; and of this there is no doubt. But I cannot concur with the view usually taken, according to which the ark itself is regarded as a type of Christ. This ark, concealing within it the law, like a threatening sword in its scabbard, stood behind a double veil, in the solitary darkness of the marble sanctuary, overshadowed by the wings of golden cherubim, which are every where emblems of Divine majesty and dignity, and concealed from every eye. No one was permitted to approach it, and he that touched the ark was put to death. Even the high-priest appeared only once a year near it, on the day of atonement; and then, also, not without sacriHce and sprinkling of blood. All which are indications of estrangement and variance, and not of reconciliation and favour.

The ark, in itself, was a symbol solely of the majestic and irritated Deity; and the golden lid which covered it, and which is generally regarded as a type of Christ — inasmuch as Christ covers the law, and is the end of the law — was only a figure of the Divine holiness, which insists, with inexorable firmness, on the keeping of its laws, and cannot desist from its commandments. If this covering had typified Christ, the approach to the ark would then have been more free and less dangerous. Rut the approach to it was only free from danger, when the high priest drew near to it, with the blood of the sacrifice, and seven times sprinkled with it the golden covering. God then revealed himself favourably above the ark. By this sprinkling of the lid or mercy-seat with the sacrificial blood, it became a type of the Divine holiness, which was appeased by the sacrifice of Christ; and thus God — of course typically — was reconciled; and then the consolation of forgiveness was connected with the believing view of the mercy -seat. Now this was the shadow; but here, Paul intends to say, is the true propitiary — the holiness of Godj appeased by blood in Christ Jesus. He who looks at him shall live: he that approaches to him has nothing to fear. His name is Iqiraanuel, God with us in Christ Jesus.

The Apostle therefore means to tell us nothing else than what John announces, in plain terms, in his first epistle, “Jesus Christ is the propitiaation for our sins.” He is the propitiation — not merely a propitiator, but the propitiation itself. Not by this means or that, but by his own person, he filled up the gulf, which was fixed between us and God; with his own flesh he healed the dreadful breach which sin had made; with his own self he built the golden bridge, which re-united heaven and earth. The reconciliation of God with the sinner has its foundation in him; not in the doctrine which he has brought us, nor in the regeneration which he has wrought in us; but in his own person, and that exclusively. Before even a spark of the new life glimmered in me, and religion was still a stumbling block and foolishness to me, the eye of God had already looked upon me in love; how should I otherwise have ever been converted, and incorporated into his people? And whilst I was any thing else than reconciled to God, but was still his enemy, God was already reconciled to me, because Christ had accomplished the reconciliation without me.

Christ is therefore the propitiation; and the matter is by no means to be considered as if he first made the reconciliation by inclining my heart in love to the Almighty; in that case the reason would he in me, why God was my friend. But it Ues out of me, in the person who bleeds on the cross; and this is my consolation, my anchorage, and the rock of my confidence. Christ is the propitiation, because he, if I may so say, is the storm which has dispelled the clouds of wrath from the brow of the Almighty; because he endured the punishment we had merited, and, atoning Divine justice with himself, unfettered the stream of love in the Eternal breast, which now flows down uninterruptedly upon the world. The consuming fire upon the throne he has changed for us into a gracious God; has transfigured the countenance, in which we read the sentence of death, into a blissful fatherly countenance, without us, and entirely by himself; and has thus rescued his chosen people as a brand out of the burning; hence he is called the propitiation.

The Apostle now states further respecting Christ, this living propitiation, that “God hath set him forth” as such. Doubtless the Apostle had here something more in view than the manifestation of Christ: he does not merely intend to point out how God set him forth, by sending him into the world, afterwards by exhibiting him upon the cross, and finally, by the preaching of the gospel before the eyes of the heathen. The stone on which it was intended that all the world should unhesitatingly erect the edifice of their salvation and their hope, was not to be moveable, but firm as the everlasting hills, and receive from the throne of the Divine Majesty, a solemn and unequivocal sanction; — and such also was the case. I remind you of the voice of God from heaven respecting him, and of the testimony of the angels, that he was the Saviour; of the witness which the skies bore to him when hanging on the cross, by clothing themselves in mourning, and of the sun, when he veiled his face; of the earth, which trembled with joy under the dev, of his blood, and of the graves which opened themselves beneath it, and yielded up their prisoners. And then also of the glory of the third day, and of the resurrection of the sleeping lion from his couch; of the victorious plaudits of the rending rocks, of the glory of God around the re-awakened bleeding form, and of the crowning of this sacrificial lamb with glory and honour. These are the loud blasts of the trumpet during which the mercy-seat was erected; this the Divine character and name by which the rock of salvation was countersigned and sealed. God has established, proclaimed, and verified Christ as the Man of our hopes. This is also what the Apostle gives us to understand.

Christ, as the propitiation, says the Apostle further, is given to faith, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.” Faith places us in the enjoyment of the blissful fellowship of this man, who is himself the propitiation. This faith is a powerful mward process, and an act of the soul which surpasses all human power. In this faith the man lets go of himself, and throws himself helplessly upon the merits of another, like a shipwrecked mariner catches at the plank. In this faith, the individual becomes totally powerless, according to the spirit, and sinks into Jesus’ arms, or else he would sink into despair. In this faith, the man capitulates, like a fortress in flames, and exchanges the honour of being able to help himself, for°the blissful disgrace of living by grace. In this faith we cast ourselves down a precipice, and on the way we catch hold of a root — the root of Jesse. “Lord Jesus preserve me, have mercy upon me!” — this is the act of faith; something violent, and, without God, impossible. Paul descriminates real faith still more minutely. He calls it a belief, not on, but in the blood of Christ. This blood is the peculiar element of faith, and the atmosphere in which it lives its real and complete life. Its home is on the sacrificial place of the great High Priest, and its abiding residence on the blood-stained altar of Immanuel. In Gethsemane are the arbours in which it most loves to rest, and it keeps its festivals beneath the cross. It is a bee — and the wounds of Jesus are its flowers; a dove — and on Calvary is its olive tree; a swan — and Jesus’ blood is the lake, on which it glides in proud repose. The death of the Son of God is the spring which nourishes and refreshes it; the passion of the Mediator, the green pasture on which it feeds; in the mystery of the cross it lives and moves; and as long as it has not found that resting-place, the sparrow has not found its house, nor the swallow its nest. Wherever this faith in his blood resides, there Christ is a propitiation The man becomes conscious that he is now reconciled, and thus he reposes on the bosom of God. His pacified conscience tells him so, and the peace in his heart. He perceives it in the paths of his life. He feels that he is led by the hand of Eternal Love, and by the leading-strings of Divine Mercy: and daily does he receive, in a manifold manner, the most unequivocal proofs, that he is now made acceptable to God in the Beloved.

n. After the Apostle has informed us that Jesus Christ is our propitiation, he shows us how he became so. And, lo! near the throne of grace appears the throne which blazes with flames of fire. Tremble, ye sinners!

“God hath set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” — it is now said, farther, “to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.” Do you hear? Calvary is a scene of vengeance, the cross a gibbet, and the bleeding form upon it a living proof of the retributive justice of God. My God! how well thou art able to demonstrate and to vindicate thine honour!

It is true, that until the death of Christ, the hoHness and retributive justice of God were obscured. Notwithstanding all the storms of wrath, which at various times darkened the horizon of the earth — the patience and forbearance of God still beamed in a much clearer light than his fiery indignation and his vengeance. The whole heathen world, which had long merited a second dehige, had prosecuted its abominations, unhindered, from century to century, under the shield of Divine forbearance. The people of Israel — that stiff-necked race! — worthy of the fate of a Sodom and Gomorrah, was still treated as a favourite child, and borne by the Lord upon eagles’ wings. Reprobate hordes, like those at Nineveh, at length repent; and immediately all is well, the sin is covered, and they are pardoned without delay. Sinners, such as Rahab, David, Solomon, and a thousand others, are called children of God; are watched over as the apple of his eye; receive testimony that they please God, and are at length received as saints into heaven without hindrance. Such a mode of Divine procedure was certainly intended to represent him to the world as a God, who causes his sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and his rain to descend upon the just and the unjust; who does not take any very particular notice of sin — and, generally speaking, cannot possess such an unconditional and inexorable abhorrence of sin. This long-suffering forbearance was less fitted for magnifying his holiness in the sight of the world, and imparting to it a feeling of awe for his majesty. This the Apostle also intimates, when he says, “God hath set forth Christ to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;” thus giving us to understand, that this righteousness was not only not rendered apparent by such forbearance and patience, but, on the contrary, was obscured and veiled from the eyes of the world; and, on this very account, in order to be seen and acknowledged by the world, a new declaration and demonstration of it was requisite.

And, behold! he points us to Calvary, and says, There he hangs, who is the living proof of the retributive justice of God! We direct our eyes thither, and the most dreadful and horrible spectacle which the world ever beheld, presents itself to our view. The fetal waves of the deluge do not announce it so loudly, nor is it so prominently written in the smoking ashes of the vale of Siddim, the flames of Sodom and Gomorrah do not publish so impressively to the world, how righteous the Almighty is, as is manifest here, in a manner sufficient to cause a stone to melt. The man who is bleeding yonder, is God’s Isaac — his other self, his only-begotten child — his sole, whole, and entire love. It pleased this Son to take our part, to burden himself with our sins, to suffer our transgressions to be imputed to him, and to present himself with this blood-red burden before the tribunal of God. Brethren, I beseech you 1 if it had been any way possible for God to let mercy take the place of justice, and retract his “Cursed be every one ‘.” — would he not have done it, when his only beloved Son, the Son of his heart, stood before him as a smner, laden with our iniquities? Ah, if there were any thine capable of touching his heart, of appeasuig his wrath, of bending his adamantme justice, and of inducing him to a free amnesty and overlooking of sin — would it not have been the sight of Him who was the apple of his eye, his Jedidjah, his Christ? Doubtless, my brethren! But it was not possible.

What occurs! Good God, what a scene! The Father seizes the sword. Though his heart bled within him, yet it avails not. He waves it, turns away his face, and-oh, we are ready to cover our eyes and to break out into a cry of horror ! — his only beloved Son is struck down into the dust, like a worm that is trodden upon, and no longer like a man; wretched to an extent that no mortal had ever been. How he writhes and struggles, groans and moans! “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death! Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me »” He utters the words; falls upon his face; reiterates them; trembles in every limb, and the bloody sweat presses itself from his veins. He is given into the power of Satan’s instruments. The pit has no execration, hell no blasphemy, which is not spit forth against him. How is the fairest of the children of men abused! His visage spat upon and wounded; his back bleeding from the scourge, and his hands bound. With a crown of thorns upon his bleeding head, he totters to the place of execution. O horror upon horror! Nails are driven through his hands and his feet. Fastened to the accursed tree, he is lifted up between heaven and earth; and his blood, like a rosy dew, trickles down upon his murderers, in order — O wondrous recompence! — to wash away from them the impious deed at the moment of its commission. Languishing in his solitary elevation, behold him now surrounded by obscurity and darkness, — outward and inward night. The torture reaches its utmost extremity. O distress unparalleled! His soul is in agony and flames, and experiences the torments of the damned, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He moans enough to move a stone to pity. He is hurled into the pit, in the spirit, and the most horrible of all thoughts assaults him — that of the hole of the pit closing upon him; and then^O woe! woe! if this last ray of light were to vanish — all would be lost, and he would fall into the jaws of despair. The king of terrors approaches, enveloped in all his horrors — death, the power of which Satan possesses. He opens his jaws, and the Lord of all lords is a bleeding corpse. My God! how appalling, how terrible!

And what is this, my brethren! and for what purpose these torments? Is this love on the part of God; or mercy, indulgence, or forbearance? “To declare his righteousness,” exclaims the Apostle; and we now know the meaning of these horrors, — fearful and terrible! But the Scriptures state it unequivocally, definitely, and repeatedly. Our tongue would else not venture to express it. They are not purifying flames, which break in upon Jesus; they are not chastisements unto life, and strokes of the rod of love. They are the thunders of offended majesty, the fiery billows of eternal wrath, the flames of Divine vengeance. It is the blow of the beheading sword, curse, condemnation, judicial execution, and the recompence of transgression on the part of Him, who will not suffer himself to be mocked, “to declare his righteousness.” The costs are now demanded from the Surety, for the forbearance which God had previously exemplified towards sinners; the debt is now paid, which the Almighty had remitted till that moment. The ransom is now presented, in virtue of which Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and whatever other name poor sinners may bear, are absolved from the merited punishment. Here the abominations by which Rahab, David, Solomon and others had merited hell, and which were at that time remitted them, receive their full and due reward. All to prove that God is just, and does not act in an arbitrary manner, nor according to weak, illegal, and irregular love. It was on this account that Christ became a curse for sin, and was made sin; was plunged into the floods of woe, and given up to the torments of hell.

Now what say ye to this declaration of the living God respecting his righteousness? Behold, the cross is transformed into a tribunal, and Calvary becomes the scene of the glorification of that God, who does not suffer himself to be mocked. Yea, tremble, ye sinners, at such a sight! How shall the God, who could not spare nor overlook sin when he beheld it upon the sole-beloved of his heart, overlook it in you, who are so deserving of his hatred? Let the long-suffering and patience he has hitherto exercised towards you, not deceive you. The vials of wrath are filled for you; and before you are aware, forbearance is at an end, justice takes the place of mercy, and retains the field. See how the storms which had slumbered in the heavens for thousands of years, discharge themselves on Calvary; and how iniquities, which had long been regarded as forgotten, and which during the course of centuries had experienced the most gracious forbearance, are subsequently rewarded. But forbearance is not forgetfulness, and if the flame of wrath was delayed, it was not on that account extinguished. Our God is a consuming fire, and his judgments in due time overtake the aggressor. Listen then to the voice of alarm and thunder which is directed to you from the cross of the Lamb. Tremble at the fiery billows, which you here see roaring and going over the head of God’s Mediator; they are the same that shall devour the adversaries. Rise up, therefore! lay hold of the horns of the altar, and save your souls in the wounds of the Man with the crown of thorns. Here, where you hear with horror the rolling of the thunders of Divine wrath — here is your city of refuge, — here, and no where else!

III. Calvary is therefore a place where all the terrors of Divine Majesty concentrate themselves; the cross, a scaffold, and a place of the horrifying revelation of that wrath, which burns down to the lowest hell. Certainly so it is. That bloody scene has however another side. Viewed from the latter, Calvary appears as a hill, from whence cometh our help, and as the mountain of our peace; the cross as the standard of our liberty, and the true tree of life. The greatest conceivable problem is solved in the cross of Christ, and a contradiction reconciled, than which there could not have been invented one more striking* He that dwells in Heaven is faithful, just, and holy, and a consuming fire; and yet he must pronounce the wicked pious, and treat transgressors as righteous. Is he able to do this? Not without denying himself, and being at variance with himself. We cannot judge otherwise but in this manner; we must regard it as impossible, and the understanding of the most enlightened seraph would have been unable to discover in what manner this impossibility could ever have become possible. Nevertheless, blessed be the highly exalted and only wise God! the greatest of all enigmas is solved, and the way to render possible that which is impossible discovered. Hear what Paul says, with an emphatic repetition, “To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justiiier of him that believeth in Jesus.” Have you understood it? The bloody execution is the basis on which God, without infringing upon his holiness, truth, and justice, can now really justify the ungodly, absolve the accursed, and beatify those who are worthy of death; this is the meaning of the Apostle.

“Him that believeth in Jesus” — says the Apostle; he who, as it respects his spiritual life, has sprung up from faith, as the plant from the kernel, and is come forth out of faith, as from a bath of regeneration; he that has let go of himself, and leans upon the shoulder of Christ, either in the way of appropriation, or by longing and ardently desiring, is declared by God to be righteous, guiltless, and worthy of eternal life. The man was ungodly; but it is now said to him. There is no condemnation to thee. He is dust, and nothing but sin in himself, and yet he receives this testimony that he pleases

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God. He is worthy of death, and yet God takes him to his heart, embraces him as a favourite, and promises him paradise for an inheritance. And this is done freely and unconditionally to all who possess true faith in the blood of Christ, and without reference to what the individual may subsequently do for his God, or how far he may advance in sanctification.

Justly would we abhor such a doctrine if no cross stood upon Calvary. It would then be as absurd as it would be blasphemous to invent such a mode of procedure as applicable to the supremely perfect God. God cannot call darkness light, nor bitter sweet. The doctrine of justification would be the most outrageous lie, the maddest and most absurd delusion, which was ever heard of in the world, if no cross stood upon that hill. But the cross! the cross! ‘Tis that unites the most striking contrasts, and solves the greatest and most difficult of all riddles. Far be it from God to pronounce a sinner righteous in his sins. It is thus the devil justifies, and not God. God declares me just because there is no longer any thing damnable in me — consequently he does so in truth. The Surety is become my sin — I his righteousness. He has atoned for my transgression. He has elevated it upon the cross, and endured in his own body what it deserved. The threefold punishment with which God threatened sin, fell upon him and crushed him in my stead. Hell was let loose against him. He who dwells in heaven forsook him. Death swallowed him up. All my iniquities were laid upon him — all, whether already committedj or which may in future be committed. Even that which still sleeps in my veins, as a germ in embryo, has lost its culpability, because it has already received its desert in my representative. No ungodly thought can be excited in me, which did not lay upon my Surety, and the strength of sin, its damning and destroying power, is broken and for ever done away. The whole sum of my guilt and crimes stand registered in that hand-writing which the Saviour nailed to the cross; and if I am one of his members, who in heaven or earth might dwell more safely than I, or who more quietly await the appearing of the great Judge?

Be not offended at these statements, my friends. What we now bring before your eyes, is the very Gospel of our text, the mystery of godliness, and the sweet and excellent kernel, without which the whole Christian religion, notwithstanding all the truths it otherwise offers us, would only be an empty shell to the poor sinner, and a well without water. And if he had left one of my sins unatoned for, the whole of his sufferings would not have availed me, since one transgression renders me not less liable to eternal death than a thousand. It was necessary, therefore, to atone for all or none. And we know that God has cast all our sins upon him, and his obedience upon US. Now when God commands and glorifies us as righteous — He is perfectly justified in doing so, after the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us. In the crucified Christ, therefore, lies the actual reason why God, even when he justifies the ungodly, is still righteous, and continues so; and why the atonement is not a mere arbitrary matter, but rests upon a profound basis of equity and justice.

You now understand, my brethren, what is the Apostle’s meaning. It is in reality a sublime and unfathomably profound expression; an immovable rock and pillar supporting the most consolatory doctrine of the whole of the Christian religion, and the article of faith of the representative satisfaction of our adorable Surety, and the bleeding atonement, by which, appearing for us in judgment, he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. In fact, that individual must be blind, or false and deceitful, who mistakes this scriptural doctrine. We are well aware of the artifices, with which such characters are able to pervert such passages as the one before us, notwithstanding their unequivocal nature, and to fit them into a system of their own inventing. But these artifices are not from God, but elsewhere; and sincerity is not their parent.

Christ, our representative, advocate, surety, and Goel, obedient in our stead and in our place, and made sin and a curse — is the inmost vital marrow of evangelical religion, the ground on which the edifices of our hopes are erected. We therefore preach the cross to you, in order that we may not weaken, neutralize, and annihilate it; and, whilst vitally apprehending it in such a signification, we become conscious why the Apostle calls the cross, and the mystery of the cross, a power of God. For is it not evident to you what an abhorrence to sin a cross must, first of all, impart to us, on which we see the Son of God, the sole-beloved of the Father, expiring in infernal torments, because it was not possible for the Almighty — however willing he might be — to remit the punishment to transgressors, against whom his whole wrath and fiery indignation was inflamed. Cannot you imagine to yourselves what penitence and contrition the sight of a scafibld should occasion, where the Ancient of Days protests against sin in such a manner, that mountains might quake with horror at it. Cannot you form an idea what a flood of the most substantial consolation must rush into a contrite soul from a tree, to which we behold a handwriting nailed, in which all our sins — all, all, from first to last — are registered, and upon which those vials of wrath are poured out to the last drop, which we had filled by our transgressions, and which stood, ready to be poured out upon us, near the throne of Eternal Majesty? Cannot you have any conception what a flame of the most ardent reciprocal love must issue forth from the heart of a poor sinner, at contemplating an event like that on Golgotha, where he sees the Lord of glory, in unsearchable compassion, present his own faithful breast to the fiery darts of vengeance, which were intended to have consumed the sinner; and when he beholds him, urged by the most disinterested love, arresting the lightnings in their course, which were about to destroy us for ever in hell, and turning them upon his own head? For my own part, I know nothing, either in heaven or on earth, so calculated to annihilate man on the one side, and elevate and raise him up on the other — to humble him in the dust and thoroughly tranquillize him, and bind him firmly to the heart of God with the fetters of the most lively and ardent love, as the cross, regarded in a Scriptural light.

May He himself initiate you in the mystery of his cross, in order that the self-confident may feel a salutary alarm, and that the soul of him who is thus alarmed may be for ever tranquillized. Whoever of you is still lying amongst the sleepers on the borders of the pit, let him awake under the thunders of that terrible righteousness, which manifested itself upon Calvary; and whoever cannot be awakened, even by these thunders, let that love smite him, which bathes itself in its own blood, to save a world of hell-deserving sinners from destruction.

The blood of the Son of God will decide the lot of all of you. It will come upon you either in the way of eternal vengeance or eternal grace,

It will descend either upon your hands to cleanse you, or upon your head eternally to condemn you. Arise therefore, ye who are groaning under the load of your guilt; hasten and save your souls. Sink weeping upon the heart of the mighty Saviour, and embrace his feet. Flee into those wounds, which ye inflicted upon him; there is your city of refuge; — and bury all your burdens beneath his cross; and when his complaint has broken your heart — “Thou hast made me to serve with thy sins,” — then imbibe heaven into your souls from the words that follow: “But I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” Amen.