With reference to the latter, it is indeed a beautiful thing to see this fruit of the Spirit abounding in the chastened child of God; the Lord’s love is thereby glorified, and the comforts of the Holy Ghost are brought experimentally to the view. But where do we read that such affliction, or such patience, is to be regarded as expiation? It may be like the refiner’s fire, by means of which the Lord draws out the pure gold for his diadem, for he says himself, “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction,” but it has no connexion with expiation. The source of expiation is Divine justice, the means of it is punishment, and the end is the satisfaction of the law; the source of chastisement, on the other hand, is love, for “whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth;” the means of it may be sorrow, as the widow wept that she might rejoice over her risen son; but the end is that we are made more like to Christ, for “he does it for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.” Let no afflicted believer, then, suppose that God is angry with him in his trouble, or that by his patient endurance he can make satisfaction for his sin. Rather let him take his sorrow as a pledge of love, as a sweet token that the Lord has not left him to the wanderings of his sinful heart, but is drawing him nearer to himself, and preparing him for a bright place in the coming kingdom of his Lord. And as for the other idea, that our own self-inflicted pains can make satisfaction for our sins, we need scarcely look even to the scriptural testimony for its overthrow. If a man were left for execution by an earthly judge, would his sentence be remitted if it were proved that, during his imprisonment, he had thought it right to abstain from meat? And if God’s heavy wrath frowns on a soul, and his justice demands the execution of his law, is it likely, I ask, that the sentence should be remitted because the sinner has thought it right to do penance for a week? The Catechism of Trent even presumes to say that penance is “as it were, a compensation for sin.” {11} Now, what penance can make a compensation to God? what acts of repentance are there so perfect that they do not themselves require to be repented of? and, if any such could be found, how could they make satisfaction for sin? how could the right of to-day be a compensation for the wrong of yesterday? No; if that were our hope, we might weep till the ocean overflowed with the deep tide of our penitential tears; we might lacerate and emaciate the poor human frame till it could no longer contain the worn and peaceless spirit; but, after all, there could be no peace, no satisfaction, no propitiation of God’s justice, and therefore no relief from the weight and burden of our sin. No; we must abandon all thoughts of satisfaction, and throw ourselves as we are before the cross of Christ, in a simple reliance on the one great fact, that he, as our perfect substitute, has blotted out