As soon as Christ had accomplished His work on earth, and had been exalted to be the new head of the human race, the source of pardon and grace, calling in the powers of His Godhead, He established supernatural means whereby other men might be actually joined, and kept joined, to Him, and might derive from Him the properties and privileges of a renewed and perfected nature. The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the blessed Trinity, became the wonderful agent to effect and maintain this union and communication, providing mysteriously for the gradual subjugation and destruction of the old nature, with its guilt and proneness to sin, and for the development and establishment of spiritual excellence in all those who become objects of His operations. To become such objects, it is necessary that men should be prequalified (and He gives them the power, if they ask it), by realising the misery and condemnation of their natural state, by sorrowing over and renouncing their sins, by desiring pardon and grace, and by believing that Christ had them to bestow; and, then, after becoming thus prequalified, it is further necessary, that they should make appointed use of certain outward ordinances, in the due observance of which He pledges Himself to meet them, and to apply to them the merits and the graces, in the possession of which they shall be accounted dead with Christ unto sin, and alive with Him unto righteousness. On none but those thus qualified will the Spirit operate; and on these only, when they come to Him and invite His operation in appointed ways. Such, my brethren, is the doctrine of forgiveness; such is the law of its bestowal. There is forgiveness with God of this kind, and on these terms; but there is no other forgiveness. It is because we are not fully persuaded of this truth, that we are so indifferent, so apathetic, so unthankful, so unrighteous. We do not appreciate forgiveness, through not understanding it; we do not duly seek it, through not considering how only it is to be obtained.