I know there is a theory among us, and I am prepared to endorse it, that, if we are trained by godly parents in godly homes, we may grow into the spiritual life, pass into it, as it were, by stages which it is impossible for us to register.  We are largely unconscious of these spiritual ascents; they are being made by the gracious use of influences that are in our environment, that reach us through sanctified folk, and we travel on from strength to strength, and, then, perchance, in our young manhood or womanhood, there comes a crisis of revelation, and we discover that we are in such relations with God our Father, Redeemer, and Renewer as fill us with peace, create hope and conscious strength.  But I assure you that in addition to this experience there will come, it may be early, it may be late, some moment in the life when there is discovered to the individual spirit making that ascent a sense of the awful heinousness of sin; and tho we may not have such a unique experience of evil as the Apostle Paul had, and become so conscious of it as to feel, as it were, that it is a dead body that we have to carry about with us as we go through life, interfering with the very motions of our spirit; yet we do approximate to it, and it is through these approximations to the Apostle Paul that we are lifted to the heights of spiritual achievement, and are qualified for sympathy with a sin-stricken world, and inspired by and nourished in a passionate enthusiasm to serve that world by bringing it into right relations with God.

When, therefore, a man says, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” he is asserting that which, being turned to its full and true use, carries him to this goal, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.”  For a full and true doctrine of God can only be heartily welcomed when it is associated with the message of the forgiveness of sins.  Otherwise the visions of the eternal Power may start in us the cry of Peter:  “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” When a man asserts his faith in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was crucified, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, who died on the cross; he is himself asserting his faith in the great purpose for which God sent His Son; even to take away the sin of the world, to make an end of iniquity, to bring in an everlasting righteousness; and so out of that faith he prepared for the response which the soul makes to the workings of the Spirit, the Holy Ghost within him, and he is able to say from his own knowledge of what God has been to him, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.”

Friends, you have said this again and again, some of you hundreds of times.  You have asserted it week by week.  What did you mean by it?  What exactly was the thought in your heart as the words passed over your lips, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins”?  Was it simply the recognition of a universal amnesty for a world of rebels?  Was it merely the assertion of your confidence in