1. In the first place, such a remembrance of Christ will encourage our approach to him as sinners. This indeed is the only character in which we can approach him. We cannot go with any degree of previous preparation or of personal merit. If we go to him at all, we must carry with us our burden of sin and unworthiness. Now, the remembrance of Christ who died for sinners, will greatly encourage us to do this, for we are told that the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost; that he approved the prayer of the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner;” that he promptly received the weeping penitent whom the self-righteous Pharisee rejected, and said to her “Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee;” that he threw his arms around the neck of the returning prodigal, and said, “This my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found!” and that his constant and constraining invitation is, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Now this invitation, combined with these remembrances, is a special and powerful encouragement to go to Christ, because it gives us authority and right to go. It is not a sense of need, nor an earnest desire, nor hungering and thirsting for the righteousness which the gospel feast provides, that gives us primary authority to sit down with the guests, however much these feelings may dispose us to go; but it is his own invitation which, as Master of the feast, he addresses to the perishing and the lost. That is our authority, and with that in our hand, we may go “boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” 2. Remembrance of Christ will excite and strengthen our penitential feelings. Remembrance and reflection are the means of producing conviction and contrition, especially if we remember Christ as well as our own sins. David says, “I thought on my ways, and turned my feet to thy commandments.” And reflection produced a similar effect upon Peter, after his denial of the Lord; for, “when he thought thereon, he wept.” On this same principle it is written, “They shall look on him whom they have pierced and mourn;” so that repentance, evangelical repentance, the repentance which includes a change of heart and conduct, is derived not so much from looking at the broken tables of the law, important as it is to remember them, but from looking at the broken body of the Lord. We must remember the groans and agonies of Gethsemane, rather than the thunder and earthquake of “the mount that might be touched;” we must look to Jesus rather than to Moses; and our sorrow and mourning for sin must be produced on Calvary rather than on Sinai. Law and terrors do but harden, All the while they work alone; But a sense of blood bought pardon, Can dissolve a heart of stone.