Did you ever have such thoughts? But, did you find those thoughts, that slavish terror of God’s wrath, that dread of hell, made you any _better_ men? I never did. I never saw them make any human being better. Unless you go beyond them—as far beyond them as heaven is beyond hell, as far above them as a free son is above a miserable crouching slave, they will do you more harm than good. For this is all that I have seen come of them: That all this spirit of bondage, this slavish terror, instead of bringing a man nearer to God, only drove him further from God. It did not make him hate what was wrong; it only made him dread the punishment of it. And then, when the first burst of fear cooled down, he began to say to himself: “I can never atone for my sins. I can never win back God to love me. What is done, is done. If I cannot escape punishment, let me be at least as happy as I can while it lasts. If it does not come to-day, it will come to-morrow. Let me alone, thou tormenting conscience. Let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die!” And so back rushed the poor creature into all his wrong-doing again, and fell most probably deeper than ever into the mire, because a certain feeling of desperation and defiance rose up in him, till he began to fancy that his terror was all a dream—a foolish accidental rising up of old superstitious words which he learnt from his mother or his nurse; and he tried to forget it all, and did forget it—God help him!—and his latter end was worse than his first. How then shall a man escape shame and misery, and an evil conscience, and rise out of these sins of his? For do it he must. The wages of sin is death—death to body and soul; and from sin he must escape. There is but one way, my friends. There never was but one way. Believe the text, and therefore believe the warrant of your Baptism. Believe the message of your Confirmation.