We do not deny that the consciousness of responsibility is a lofty one, and are by no means insensible to the grand and swelling sentiments concerning the moral law, and human duty, to which this noble thinker gives utterance.[4] But we are certain that if the sense of duty had pressed upon him to the degree that it did upon St. Paul; had the commandment “come” to him with the convicting energy that it did to St. Augustine, and to Pascal; he too would have discovered that the law which was ordained to life is found to be unto death.  So long as man stands at a distance from the moral law, he can admire its glory and its beauty; but when it comes close to him; when it comes home to him; when it becomes a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; then its glory is swallowed up in its terror, and its beauty is lost in its truth.  Then he who was alive without the law becomes slain by the law.  Then this ethical admiration of the decalogue is exchanged for an evangelical trust in Jesus Christ.

2.  And this leads us to remark, in the second place, that this subject shows the meaning of Christ’s work of Redemption.  The law for an alienated and corrupt soul is a burden.  It cannot be otherwise; for it imposes a perpetual restraint, urges up to an unwelcome duty, and charges home a fearful guilt.  Christ is well named the Redeemer, because He frees the sinful soul from all this.  He delivers it from the penalty, by assuming it all upon Himself, and making complete satisfaction to the broken law.  He delivers it from the perpetual restraint and the irksome effort, by so renewing and changing the heart that it becomes a delight to keep the law.  We observed, in the first part of the discourse, that if man could only bring the inclination of his heart into agreement with his sense of duty, he would be happy in obeying, and the consciousness of restraint and of hateful effort would disappear.  This is precisely what Christ accomplishes by His Spirit.  He brings the human heart into harmony with the Divine law, as it was in the beginning, and thus rescues it from its bondage and its toil.  Obedience becomes a pleasure, and the service of God, the highest Christian liberty.  Oh, would that by the act of faith, you might experience this liberating effect of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.  So long as you are out of Christ, you are under a burden that will every day grow heavier, and may prove to be fixed and unremovable as the mountains.  That is a fearful punishment which the poet Dante represents as being inflicted upon those who were guilty of pride.  The poor wretches are compelled to support enormous masses of stone which bend them over to the ground, and, in his own stern phrase, “crumple up their knees into their breasts.”  Thus they stand, stooping over, every muscle trembling, the heavy stone weighing them down, and yet they are not permitted to fall, and rest themselves upon the earth.[5] In this crouching posture, they must carry the weary heavy load without relief, and with a distress so great that, in the poet’s own language,