blood of Christ alone there is forgiveness, is still the truth preached from so many pulpits, reiterated so often in your hearing; and yet, how little do you feel its force! how little do you act upon it as a reality! how little in your consciences are you convinced that only through the blood of the Lamb there is forgiveness for the least sin that clings to our humanity! Blessed be God that Christ suffered! Justice asked for the sufferings of a man-Christ rendered the sufferings of a God. He needed no sufferings to atone for himself. All his suffering was for us, and is accessible to us. His susceptibility of suffering was just in the ratio of his spotless purity. His was a depth of agony proportionate to the grandeur and dignity of his person; and never shall we be able to see how great were the sufferings of that suffering one, till we feel perfectly how deep is the least sin of which humanity is guilty. But now, in Christ Jesus, God is faithful in his promise to forgive us, just to his own law to forgive us; his mercy having provided to the utmost fulness the victim which his justice needed and demanded. Thus God forgives us. What a precious truth! Do we rise to an apprehension of the magnificence of this truth, that God forgives us-forgives us the moment that we ask it delights in mercy? Glorious truth! God waits to forgive us. Glorious truth! There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared. Well may the prophet exclaim, "Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy."

Did you ever notice, my dear friends, that the prophet seems inspired by the Spirit of God to exhaust all the resources of human speech, in order to show us what free forgiveness is offered in the gospel? It would be an interesting investigation for you to pursue at your leisure, to count the expressions applied in Scripture to the forgiveness of sins. It is called "the remission of sins." God releases the prisoner kept in the prison of condemnation by his sins. God says, in Hebrews, "I will remember their sins no more." Among the Jews there was remembrance made of sin every year; they felt that sin ever needed a fresh' sacrifice, but sin forgiven in Christ is remembered no more. It

is so complete that God finds this expression only adequate to embody the extinction of it-"I will remember their sins no more." He calls it in another passage "not imputing to them their trespasses." He treats our sin as a nonenity, and accepts us through Jesus Christ just as if we were innocent as to the untainted and unfallen angels about the throne. Another expression that he employs is, "covered;" just as the waters of the Red Sea covered the drowned Egyptians-just as the mighty ocean covers the pebble that is dropped into its silent bosom, so God's mercy covers our sin. It is called again, "taking away;" just as the goat let into the wilderness bearing the sins of Israel was represented as taking them away into a land not inhabited: so Christ, as the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world. It is called, again, "blotting out :" "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins:" just as a writing is expunged-just as a stain is extinguished by a chemical solution. No language is more fitted to express the fulness of his forgiveness than, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." It is called, again, in another place, "casting them behind his back." The most awful passage in Scripture is, "Thou hast set my secret sins in the light of thy countenance." We ourselves cannot see our secret sins, because our heart is so deadened by the hardening influence of sin; for the greater a sinner is, the less he sees his sins; hence, if you heard the holiest saint in the act of confessing his sins, you would suppose he was the greatest sinner on earth; and if you heard the greatest sinner confessing his sins, you would probably imagine him the most excellent of mankind. It is when our vision is purged by the unction of the Spirit of God, that we are enabled plainly to see, that sins which in the world's eye are microscopic, are in his eye deep as crimson, or as purple in their colour. Our secret sins are thus set in "the light of his countenance;" but when God forgives them, "he casts them behind his back." Another passage speaks of removing them from us: "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our sins from us."

He whom we have crucified, forgives us. He who is the offended one, forgives the offenders. It is a royal and entire forgiveness, not one charge is left behind, not one sin is unpardoned.

It is

He will remember our sins and our transgressions no more. an irrevocable forgiveness. When God forgives us, he forgives us completely and irrevocably. God's thoughts are not as our thoughts. He does not repeal his acts of forgiveness. He never recalls, he never revokes them. He forgives us fully, freely, and for ever. And it is instant forgiveness. The instant that an humble heart asks for forgiveness in the name of Jesus, that instant it is forgiven: the Saviour says, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." It is a cordial forgiveness. It is not a legal forgiveness; so that we are not merely lawfully forgiven, as if by justice; but it is a paternal forgiveness. If only legally forgiven by justice, we should be admitted into heaven as forgiven culprits, and shunned as criminals returned from a penal settlement. We should be as men lawfully forgiven, and tolerated as deeply guilty. But this is not the forgiveness of the Bible. It is forgiveness in justice, and therefore it is legal; but it is also forgiveness from a Father's heart, and is therefore a cordial forgiveness. And therefore the sinner admitted into heaven is not only admitted there as lawfully forgiven, but cordially welcomed: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found." This forgiveness is an echo on earth to the absolution that is pronounced from the throne. The echo is an evidence of the original. If you are forgiven, do you recollect the day, the hour, and the place when you bowed the knee and sought forgiveness truly, confessing your sins fully, and relying for an answer to your prayer only on the blood of the everlasting covenant? If you can say that from the very heart you sought it, and that you sought it by Jesus as the only way, you are indeed forgiven, and it is sin, it is misery to doubt it. Go forth at once, putting away all suspicion, and henceforth rejoice in the blessedness of him whose sins are forgiven, being confident in God, relying on the riches of his mercy in Christ; and him that thus honours him, He will abundantly honour.

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LECTURE XXII.

DANIEL'S LITANY.

"O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God for thy city and thy people are called by thy name."-Daniel ix. 19.

I CLOSE my remarks on the extremely precious prayer which has been the subject of my exposition during the last three lectures. I am sure we do not greatly need any liturgy formed by man, if we have access to so beautiful a litany as this is, inspired by God. At all events, however beautiful may be the litanies of man, in true beauty they cannot excel, and in comprehensiveness they cannot exceed, the prayer which the Spirit of God breathed into the heart of Daniel, and of which this chapter is the eloquent and striking expression. How earnest-how intensely earnest-are such petitions as these: "O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake; for thy city and thy people are called by thy name." And again, how striking these words: "Thou therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, that the time, the set time, to favour her, O Lord, draw near." At this day this is the prayer of the Jew. I can conceive no spectacle more touching than the weary-footed wanderer of Salem coming back to that city, in which was the ark of the covenant, and the cherubim of glory, that shone upon the mercy-seat; and beholding, with deep anguish, the barefooted monk desecrating it in one place, by a Christianity more superstitious than the Judaism of the modern Jew, and the Moslem profaning it in another place by the personation of a cruel and sanguinary imposture; and his beloved city, which was once the joy of the whole earth, the focus of all

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light, and the central object of enthusiastic love, despoiled, degraded, desecrated. Yet, in its deep desecration, its long-continued degradation, God has left inextinguishable yearnings after restoration in the hearts of that striking race-these living national phenomena, that exceed in grandeur all material phenomena―these living witnesses of the truth of God's threats, and I believe not less so witnesses of the truth of God's promises. Nothing is more remarkable than to see the Jews crowding from all lands, now that the restoration of Zion and the rebuilding of Jerusalem draws nigh, kissing the very stones, wetting them with their tears, and praying, it may be, a prayer truly heard—for it is possible-shall we say it is not improbable that the Jews who rejected Jesus of Nazareth as portrayed by John the evangelist, may unconsciously accept Jesus of Nazareth as portrayed by Isaiah the prophet, and in the name of the true Messiah, though that name is to him no music, he may lift up Daniel's prayer to Daniel's God-in groups of gray-haired pilgrims amid the débris and wreck of Jerusalem, that God would arise and have mercy upon Zion, and lift the light of his countenance upon her, and hasten the advent of the set time to favour her.

In reading the whole of Daniel's prayer for Jerusalem, we cannot fail to see that it is as appropriate in the present day as it was before. I am anxious to notice certain features in it, which must strike the Christian, whether he peruse it or pray it. I have already shown in what respects fasting and sackcloth are connected with prayer. I have shown, in my next exposition, sin the thing confessed, forgiveness the blessing sought for, and confession a practice in which Daniel persevered. I now proceed to develop some of the features of this prayer; next, the time at which it was offered; and, in the third place, the answer vouchsafed to it. The first feature that strikes me, as kindling every clause with brightness and the warmth of heavenly fire, is the intensity of the feelings and the expressions of Daniel. Clearly the prophet felt deeply, and therefore he asked so fervently. An instant token, as all are aware, of an accepted sacrifice in the elder times, was the descent of fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice. Even so the first intimation to you that your prayer will be answered, is the intensity with which you pray that