4. This higher Rock is the only refuge I can find when I feel the need of _pardon and sanctification_. The human conscience testifies of guilt. God's law has been set at naught, and its penalty has been incurred. Justice demands a satisfaction for transgression, else the gate of reconciliation is closed for ever. How can this fearful difficulty be overcome? How can God forgive the guilty? Shut me up to myself, and I am in despair. I could commit the sin myself, but I cannot give the satisfaction. All my present attempts to obedience can have no effect upon what I have done before. My guilt is where I cannot reach it. My prayers and tears and vows cannot wash out the damning record which stands against me. Even could I reform my life and tread in the path of holiness from this time forth, there is guilt already which I cannot cancel. Oh, the utter helplessness of the soul is one of the most agonizing feelings which attend conviction of sin. Guilt stares me in the face, after all my strugglings. The dark waters go over my head, and I sink for ever, were it not for a rock I can seize hold of, which is Christ a Saviour. The gospel points me to an atonement made for me in the death of Jesus Christ, and bids me look by faith to the sacrifice of the cross. This is precisely what I want. Oh let me reach this Rock, and I can count over my transgressions without despair; for here the justice of God is satisfied. Here is a full atonement for them all. Here God smiles upon me with a look of forgiveness, for the law is magnified, and grace abounds. Here is my refuge against all the accusations of conscience and the terrors of guilt. Here on this Rock I rest in peace, a high Rock, above the clouds where the lightning flashes of wrath play and justice hurls the bolts. Lastly, this divine Rock is the Christian's only support in _the trying calamities of life_. Whatever be their nature, whether temptations, or afflictions, or spiritual distresses, he meets them by looking above and beyond himself for aid. There is a kind of heroism which the world applauds, exhibited sometimes by men in the trying straits of life, a gloomy heroism which inspires them to breast misfortune with an iron nerve, and "take up arms against a sea of troubles," in firm reliance upon their own indomitable will. It never quails before the face of danger, but will perish in the fierce encounter rather than submit to fear. Often it assumes the form of a grim and sullen stoicism, which sheds no tear over the desolation of cherished hopes, and utters no plaintive cry over the wreck of lost affections. With dogged silence it buries the last of kindred, and at last lies down to die with features cold and mute as marble, and with sealed passports departs to the eternal world. This, which the world calls manly firmness, is a foul libel on humanity, but a few degrees removed from the sublime stolidity of the brute.