we
go over to the merciful side of the Divine Nature, we can come to no
_certain_ conclusions, if we are shut up to the workings of our own
minds, or to the teachings of the world of nature about us. Picture to
yourself a thoughtful pagan, like Solon the legislator of Athens, living
in the heart of heathenism five centuries before Christ, and knowing
nothing of the promise of mercy which broke faintly through the heavens
immediately after the apostasy of the first human pair, and which found
its full and victorious utterance in the streaming, blood of Calvary.
Suppose that the accusing and condemning law written, upon his conscience
had shown its work, and made him conscious of sin. Suppose that the
question had risen within him, whether that Dread Being whom he
"ignorantly worshipped," and against whom he had committed the offence,
would forgive it; was there anything in his own soul, was there anything
in the world around him or above him, that could give him an affirmative
answer? The instant he put the question: Will God _punish_ me for my
transgression? the affirming voices were instantaneous and authoritative.
"The soul that sinneth it shall die" was the verdict that came forth from
the recesses of his moral nature, and was echoed and re-echoed in the
suffering, pain, and physical death of a miserable and groaning world
all around him. But when he put the other question to himself: Will the
Deity _pardon_ me for my transgression? there was no affirmative answer
from any source of knowledge accessible to him. If he sought a reply from
the depths of his own conscience, all that he could hear was the terrible
utterance: "The soul that sinneth it shall die." The human conscience can
no more promise, or certify, the forgiveness of sin, than the ten
commandments can do so. When, therefore, this pagan, convicted of sin,
seeks a comforting answer to his anxious inquiry respecting the Divine
clemency towards a criminal, he is met only with retributive thunders and
lightnings; he hears only that accusing and condemning law which is
written on the heart, and experiences that fearful looking-for of
judgment and fiery indignation which St. Paul describes, in the first
chapter of Romans, as working in the mind of the universal pagan world.

But we need not go to Solon, and the pagan world, for evidence upon this
subject. Why is it that a convicted man under the full light of the
gospel, and with the unambiguous and explicit prom