“it seemed
    As he, who showed most patience in his look,
    Wailing exclaimed:  I can endure no more."[6]

Such is the posture of man unredeemed.  There is a burden on him, under which he stoops and crouches.  It is a burden compounded of guilt and corruption.  It is lifted off by Christ, and by Christ only.  The soul itself can never expiate its guilt; can never cleanse its pollution.  We urge you, once more, to the act of faith in the Redeemer of the world.  We beseech you, once more, to make “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” your own.  The instant you plead the merit of Christ’s oblation, in simple confidence in its atoning efficacy, that instant the heavy burden is lifted off by an Almighty hand, and your curved, stooping, trembling, aching form once more stands erect, and you walk abroad in the liberty wherewith Christ makes the human creature free.

[Footnote 1: 
                               “She in vice
    Of luxury was so shameless, that she made
    Liking to be lawful by promulged decree,
    To clear the blame she had herself incurr’d.” 
    DANTE:  Inferno, v. 56.]

[Footnote 2:  Romans vii. 13, 14.]

[Footnote 3:  KANT:  Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft (Beschlusz).—­De Stael’s rendering, which is so well known, and which I have employed, is less guarded than the original.]

[Footnote 4:  Compare the fine apostrophe to Duty.  PRAKTISCHE VERNUNFT, p. 214, (Ed. Rosenkranz.)]

[Footnote 5:  “Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway.”  Rom. xi. 10.]

[Footnote 6:  DANTE:  Purgatory x. 126-128.]

THE SIN OF OMISSION.

Matthew xix. 20.—­“The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up:  what lack I yet?”

The narrative from which the text is taken is familiar to all readers of the Bible.  A wealthy young man, of unblemished morals and amiable disposition, came to our Lord, to inquire His opinion respecting his own good estate.  He asked what good thing he should do, in order to inherit eternal life.  The fact that he applied to Christ at all, shows that he was not entirely at rest in his own mind.  He could truly say that he had kept the ten commandments from his youth up, in an outward manner; and yet he was ill at ease.  He was afraid that when the earthly life was over, he might not be able to endure the judgment of God, and might fail to enter into that happy paradise of which the Old Testament Scriptures so often speak, and of which he had so often read, in them.  This young man, though a moralist, was not a self-satisfied or a self-conceited one.  For, had he been like the Pharisee a thoroughly blinded and self-righteous person, like him he never would have approached Jesus of Nazareth, to obtain His opinion respecting his own religious character and prospects.