beautiful and glorious, a thing to be won by toil and tears and prayers;
but if your soul pines in its rioting, if it sickens in its worldly
wealth and splendour, if the question forces itself upon you as it never
seems to have forced itself upon Esau, "_What shall it profit a man if
he gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give
in exchange for his soul?_" then the sinner's anguish, from which there
is no escape for any one of us, may be made by Christ's dear love the
strait gate to the splendour, the glory, the bliss of heaven. And this
is Redemption. Divine love, love that could die, love that _did_ die,
that its beloved ones might not die, is the solvent which transmutes all
the shame and pain of sin to heavenly glory and bliss. "_Where sin
abounded, grace did much more abound; that as sin had reigned unto
death, even so might grace reign through righteousness, unto eternal
life, by Jesus Christ our Lord._" Here is no reversal, no obliteration
of the past, mark you; the thing that was is and shall be; no power in
the universe can blot out its trace. The experience of a sinner is part
of your being, and in its transmuted form must remain part of your
being, through eternity. These wounds and sores of sin, suffused by
Christ's great love, become the lustrous pearls of heaven. Nothing in
the past, I care not how dark or damning it may be, is irreparable by
the love which "_endured the cross and despised the shame_," that it
might win the right and the power to redeem. There is no sin whose
stains may not be wept out at the Redeemer's feet. There is no life
which may not win "She hath loved much, for she hath much forgiven" as
its record, earnest of a rapture of eternal bliss. But dream not that
the path can be an easy one, and that penitence can transmute the sorrow
into joy by a word. You have done that whose issues could only be undone
by the agony and bloody sweat of Gethsemane, the cross and passion of
Calvary; and you too must die, die to sin, that you may live to God. The
flesh, which has despised your birthright, must be mortified, crucified,
by grace. "_I am crucified with Christ_" you must learn to say; you must
know the fellowship of the sufferings of your Master, and taste the cup
of which He drank the dregs, or the lost birthright is lost for ever,
and the deed done on earth remains irreparable as well as irrevocable
through eternity.

VII.

THE CURSE OF THE GROUND.

"