d to a future with any hope that it
will mend the past? Brethren! experience teaches us that we have not
fulfilled, and cannot fulfil, what remains our plain duty,
notwithstanding our inability to discharge it--viz., 'To do justly, and
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.' To think of God's
requirements, and of my own failure, is the sure way to paralyse all
activity; just as that man in the parable who said, 'Thou art an austere
man,' went away and hid his talent in the earth. To think of God's
requirements and my own failures, if heaven has nothing more to say to
me than this stern 'Thou shalt,' is the short way to despair. And that
is why most of us prefer to be immersed in the trivialities of daily
life rather than to think of God, and of what He asks from us. For the
only way by which some of us can keep our equanimity and our
cheerfulness is by ignoring Him and forgetting what He demands, and
never taking stock of our own lives.

III. Lastly, my text leads us to think of God's gift.

I said it is a half-truth, for it only tells us of what He desires us to
be, and does not tell us of how we may be it. It is meant, like the law
of which it is a condensation, to be the _pedagogue_, to lead the child
to Jesus Christ, the true Master, and the true Gift of God.

God 'requires.' Yes, and He requires, in order that we should say to
Him, 'Lord, Thou hast a right to ask this, and it is my blessedness to
give it, but I cannot. Do Thou give me what Thou dost require, and then
I can.'

The gift of God is Jesus Christ, and that gift meets all our failures. I
have spoken of the sense of guilt that rises from the consciousness of
failure to keep the requirements of the divine law; and the gift of God
deals with that. It comes to us as we lie wounded, bruised, conscious of
failure, alarmed for results, sensible of guilt, and dreading the
penalties, and it says to us, 'Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin
purged.' 'God requires of thee what thou hast not done. Trust yourselves
to Me, and all iniquity is passed from your souls.'

I spoke of the hopelessness of future performance, which results from
experience of past failures; and the gift of God deals with that. You
cannot meet the requirements. Christ will put His Spirit into your
spirits, if you will trust yourselves to Him, and then you will meet
them, for the things which are impossible with men are possible with
God. So, if led by Micah, we pass from God's