e highest Christian liberty. Oh, would that by the act of
faith, you might experience this liberating effect of the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus. So long as you are out of Christ, you are under a
burden that will every day grow heavier, and may prove to be fixed and
unremovable as the mountains. That is a fearful punishment which the poet
Dante represents as being inflicted upon those who were guilty of pride.
The poor wretches are compelled to support enormous masses of stone which
bend them over to the ground, and, in his own stern phrase, "crumple up
their knees into their breasts." Thus they stand, stooping over, every
muscle trembling, the heavy stone weighing them down, and yet they are
not permitted to fall, and rest themselves upon the earth.[5] In this
crouching posture, they must carry the weary heavy load without relief,
and with a distress so great that, in the poet's own language,

"it seemed
As he, who showed most patience in his look,
Wailing exclaimed: I can endure no more."[6]

Such is the posture of man unredeemed. There is a burden on him, under
which he stoops and crouches. It is a burden compounded of guilt and
corruption. It is lifted off by Christ, and by Christ only. The soul
itself can never expiate its guilt; can never cleanse its pollution. We
urge you, once more, to the act of faith in the Redeemer of the world. We
beseech you, once more, to make "the redemption that is in Christ Jesus"
your own. The instant you plead the merit of Christ's oblation, in simple
confidence in its atoning efficacy, that instant the heavy burden is
lifted off by an Almighty hand, and your curved, stooping, trembling,
aching form once more stands erect, and you walk abroad in the liberty
wherewith Christ makes the human creature free.

[Footnote 1:
"She in vice
Of luxury was so shameless, that she made
Liking to be lawful by promulged decree,
To clear the blame she had herself incurr'd."
DANTE: Inferno, v. 56.]

[Footnote 2: Romans vii. 13, 14.]

[Footnote 3: KANT: Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft (Beschlusz).--De
Stael's rendering, which is so well known, and which I have employed,
is less guarded than the original.]

[Footnote 4: Compare the fine apostrophe to Duty. PRAKTISCHE VERNUNFT,
p. 214, (Ed. Rosenkranz.)]

[Footnote 5: "Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow
down their back alway.