DEBT! what a terrible word that is to every true and honest man! There are multitudes who would prefer to bear privation and poverty rather than run into debt. The workhouse is bad enough, but better the workhouse than “debt.” But will you suffer me to say that “debtors” we all of us are? “We have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” We have come short—we have given God less than His due; He has a claim against us; we are “in debt” to Him. And the debt is one that cannot be expressed in the figures and coinage of earth. It is a debt that money can never pay. I have heard sometimes of men who, when they have found themselves in financial difficulties, have called their creditors together, and have said to them, “If you will but give me time, I will pay you all in full”; and from time to time we read in our newspapers of honourable men discharging with interest debts they had incurred years before. Can we do something like that with this debt we owe to God? Can we work it off in the days and years that are to come? I cannot hold out to you any hope of doing that. Work as hard as you like to please God to-day, when the day is done, what will you have to say? Just this, “We have been unprofitable servants—we have only done what we ought.” Only what we ought—there is no margin, nothing over, which you can apply to the reduction of the old debt. The arrears of obligation are untouched. May I venture to say that, before night comes, by some sin or other, you will have added to the debt? It would be as easy to bale the ocean dry as to hope by your own efforts to pay this debt. It would be as easy—nay, it would be infinitely easier—to count the sands of the seashore than to remove this mountain load of obligation. Try your best, and you will fail as Paul failed, as Luther failed. Spite of your best efforts the debt—that crushing debt—goes on increasing. Well, what can you do? _You_ can do nothing! _Sin_ past and present, _sin_ of commission and omission, _sin_—that long, black, damning record that stands against your name in the eternal account book—what can you do with it? How can you remove it? How can you blot it out? How can you bury it out of sight and mind? How can you erase out of the book that fatal story? You say you must have something done, or that debt will strangle you. What can you do to be delivered from this body of death? My brother, you can do nothing; you cannot pay the debt, you cannot blot out the sin, you cannot erase the record from the book. Do your best, and at the end you will be “in debt.” But you say, “Can nothing be done? Am I, then, doomed to ruin and to death? Is there no way of paying this debt?” Here is the gospel in a nutshell. Here is the good news, old as the centuries, but new in your ears and mine to-day. Something _can_ be done! _You_ can do nothing, _I_ can do nothing, but God, the God against whom we have sinned, He can do everything. He can remove that mountain load of debt.