ere
is a terror also. Not until He who is the end of the law for
righteousness has clothed me with His panoply, and shielded me from their
glittering shafts in the clefts of the Rock, do I dare to look at them,
as they leap from crag to crag, and shine from the east even unto the
west.

We do not deny that the consciousness of responsibility is a lofty one,
and are by no means insensible to the grand and swelling sentiments
concerning the moral law, and human duty, to which this noble thinker
gives utterance.[4] But we are certain that if the sense of duty had
pressed upon him to the degree that it did upon St. Paul; had the
commandment "come" to him with the convicting energy that it did to St.
Augustine, and to Pascal; he too would have discovered that the law which
was ordained to life is found to be unto death. So long as man stands at
a distance from the moral law, he can admire its glory and its beauty;
but when it comes close to him; when it comes home to him; when it
becomes a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; then its
glory is swallowed up in its terror, and its beauty is lost in its truth.
Then he who was alive without the law becomes slain by the law. Then this
ethical admiration of the decalogue is exchanged for an evangelical trust
in Jesus Christ.

2. And this leads us to remark, in the second place, that this subject
shows _the meaning of Christ's work of Redemption_. The law for an
alienated and corrupt soul is a burden. It cannot be otherwise; for it
imposes a perpetual restraint, urges up to an unwelcome duty, and charges
home a fearful guilt. Christ is well named the _Redeemer_, because He
frees the sinful soul from all this. He delivers it from the penalty, by
assuming it all upon Himself, and making complete satisfaction to the
broken law. He delivers it from the perpetual restraint and the irksome
effort, by so renewing and changing the heart that it becomes a delight
to keep the law. We observed, in the first part of the discourse, that if
man could only bring the inclination of his heart into agreement with his
sense of duty, he would be happy in obeying, and the consciousness of
restraint and of hateful effort would disappear. This is precisely what
Christ accomplishes by His Spirit. He brings the human heart into harmony
with the Divine law, as it was in the beginning, and thus rescues it from
its bondage and its toil. Obedience becomes a pleasure, and the service
of God, th