The living faith of this must tranquilize the conscience. If God has satisfied Himself about my sins, I may well be satisfied also. I know I am a sinner--it may be, the chief of sinners. I know my sins are more in number than the hairs of my head; that they are black as midnight--black as hell itself. I know that any one of these sins, the very least, deserves the eternal flames of hell. I know--because God's Word tells me--that a single speck of sin can never enter His holy presence; and hence, so far as I am concerned, there was no possible issue save eternal separation from God. All this I know, upon the clear and unquestionable authority of that Word which is settled forever in heaven. But, oh, the profound mystery of the cross!--the glorious mystery of redeeming love! I see God Himself taking all my sins--the black and terrible category--all my sins, as He knew and estimated them. I see Him laying them all upon the head of my blessed Substitute, and dealing with Him about them. I see all the billows and waves of God's righteous wrath--His wrath against my sins--His wrath which should have consumed me, soul and body, in hell, throughout a dreary eternity,--I see them all rolling over the Man who stood in my stead, who represented me before God, who bore all that was due to me, with whom a holy God dealt as He should have dealt with me. I see inflexible justice, holiness, truth, and righteousness dealing with my sins, and making a clear and eternal riddance of them. Not one of them is suffered to pass! There is no connivance, no palliation, no slurring over, no indifference. This could not possibly be, once God Himself took the matter in hand. His glory was at stake; His unsullied holiness, His eternal majesty, the lofty claims of His government. All these had to be provided for in such wise as to glorify Himself in view of angels, men, and devils. He might have sent me to hell--righteously, justly, sent me to hell--because of my sins. I deserved nothing else. My whole moral being, from its profoundest depths, owns this--must own it. I have not a word to say in excuse for a single sinful thought, to say nothing of a sin-stained life from first to last--yes, a life of deliberate, rebellious, high-handed sin. Others may reason as they please as to the injustice of an eternity of punishment for a life of sin--the utter want of proportion between a few years of wrong-doing and endless ages of torment in the lake of fire. They may reason, but I thoroughly believe, and unreservedly confess, that for a single sin against such a Being as the God whom I see at the cross, I richly deserved everlasting punishment in the deep, dark, and dismal pit of hell.