Forgiveness, ransom from eternal death, deliverance from the terrible inflictions of Almighty wrath, gracious reception into GOD’S own family, and full participation of His inexhaustible love and benediction, how can sinners consent not to value this when given or offered, not to desire and seek it when needed? Yet so it is. There is many an one of our poorest possessions which we cherish more fondly; there is many an unobtained bauble which we would make more real effort to obtain. Ask yourselves, seriously, and answer to yourselves, honestly, my fellow-sinners, whether it is not so. All of you believe that you have been forgiven some thing, nay, many things. You do not suppose that you are carrying about, each one of you, the unmitigated condemnation of original sin; the full burthen of every transgression and omission of your whole lives, from the first exercise of your self-will in childhood, to that in which you offended but an hour since. You know, indeed, that much remains written against you; but you believe that much more has been blotted out; that GOD has been propitiated and reconciled to fallen man by the sacrifice and intercession of His Son; that wrath has been displaced by love; that the way of return is open; that the ears of mercy are unclosed; that the arms of grace are stretched out to unfold all those, who by birth inherited banishment, and were kept in exile by the fiery sword which turned every way and allowed none to pass to the paradise of bliss and the tree of life. What Adam lost, that and much more has Christ won. In Him you already have regained much; through Him you may have all and abound. This you know. How much of it do you feel? Where is your joy of deliverance? where your heart-leapings of praise? where your homage of gratitude for what has been forgiven? And where are your yearnings, your wrestling prayers, your strenuous efforts after the forgiveness yet needed? the cries and struggles of drowning men, grasping in your fresh peril the again stretched out rope of deliverance; imploring to be taken up once more into the ark of salvation; to be landed yet again on the shore of hope? Alas! where? Is not forgiveness obtained, unheeded; forgiveness not obtained, unsought? Not altogether, GOD be praised! There are some who never forget their deliverance; who have learnt from it gratitude for the past, and hope and direction for the future. There are some who are wont to gaze upon the book of the Divine account of them (that is, so much of it as is revealed), and as they gaze, to keep moist with the tears of humble penitence and love, the red stain of Christ’s blood, which hides, nay, has obliterated so many of the black items against them; and who, seeing how much is cancelled, cannot bear that aught should remain uncancelled, and therefore rest not, nor cease from pleading and entreating, while one single black figure is uncovered by the crimson mark of remission.