y,
and the operations of his own mind, will find that these themselves
become more dim and indistinct, so long as the process of examination is
not conducted in this joint manner; so long as the mind refuses to accept
the Divine proposition, "Come now, and let us reason _together_." He, on
the other hand, who endeavors to obtain a clear view of the Being against
whom he has sinned, and to feel the full power of His holy eye as well as
of His holy law, will find that his sensations and experiences are
gaining a wonderful distinctness and intensity that will speedily bring
the entire matter to an issue.

II. For then, by the blessing of God, he learns the second lesson taught
in the text: viz., that _there is forgiveness with God_. Though, in this
process of joint examination, your sins be found to be as scarlet, they
shall be as white as snow; though they be discovered to be red like
crimson, they shall be as wool.

If there were no forgiveness of sins, if mercy were not a manifested
attribute of God, all self-examination, and especially all this conjoint
divine scrutiny, would be a pure torment and a pure gratuity. It is
wretchedness to know that we are guilty sinners, but it is the endless
torment to know that there is no forgiveness, either here or hereafter.
Convince a man that he will never be pardoned, and you shut him up with
the spirits in prison. Compel him to examine himself under the eye of his
God, while at the same time he has no hope of mercy,--and there would be
nothing _unjust_ in this,--and you distress him with the keenest and most
living torment of which a rational spirit is capable. Well and natural
was it, that the earliest creed of the Christian Church emphasized the
doctrine of the Divine Pity; and in all ages the Apostolic Symbol has
called upon the guilt-stricken human soul to cry, "I believe in the
forgiveness of sins."

We have the amplest assurance in the whole written Revelation of God,
_but nowhere else_, that "there is forgiveness with Him, that He may be
feared." "Whoso confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall find mercy;" and
only with such an assurance as this from His own lips, could we summon
courage to look into our character and conduct, and invite God to do the
same. But the text is an exceedingly explicit assertion of this great
truth. The very same Being who invites us to reason with Him, and canvass
the subject of our criminality, in the very same breath, if we may so
speak, as