all that is immortal in him--it is then I
will trust him never again to pass by with unconcern the anguish of Him
who bore our sin in His own body on the tree.

Sometimes we look at the Lamb of God without feeling that we are
sinners, and then we have a thousand difficult questions to ask. At
other times the burden of sin is so heavy upon us, we see the
sinfulness of sin so vividly, that we get away from the mere accident
of place and time as far as it relates to sin, we see sin as God saw
it, and must ever see it--then it is we look to the Crucified One.
"When I feel myself in my heart of hearts a sinner," I once heard Dr.
Parker say, "a trespasser against God's law and God's love; when I feel
that a thought may overwhelm me in destruction, that a secret,
unexpressed desire may shut me out of heaven and make me glad to go to
hell to be away from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne--then
when I am told that Jesus Christ was wounded for my transgressions,
that upon Him was laid the chastisement of my peace, I press my way
through all the difficulties and say: If I perish I will pray and
perish at the Cross; for if this be not sufficient, it hath not entered
into the heart of man to solve the problem of human depravity, and the
human consciousness of sin."

I am not seeking to explain or defend what I am saying. I may try to
make it a little more clear before I close. For the moment I am
putting before you what I believe to be the truth of very truth. To
some I may be speaking in an unknown tongue, but not to all. If there
is one here who, with some years behind him, has ever been in serious
conference with himself, he knows that there is something radically
wrong with himself, which calls for something he is powerless to
supply. He knows that the springs of his being have been poisoned, and
he has no detergent to make them sweet. It is the fashion in our day
to speak of the old description of "hell-deserving sinner" as marred by
exaggeration, if not to say morbid. I do not fall into that fashion,
for it expresses just what I am--a hell-deserving sinner. When the
great Puritan, John Newton, saw a man taken out to be hanged, he said:
"But for the grace of God there goes John Newton." It is when the true
idea of sin is realized under the convincing power of the Holy Spirit,
that the "necessity of the sacrificial work of Christ will be felt,
understood, and become the one foundation of human hope."

Do