hues, and no others.  The truest and best religions of the ancient world were always the sternest and saddest, because the unaided human mind is certain that God is just, but is not certain that He is merciful.  When man is outside of Revelation, it is by no means a matter of course that God is clement, and that sin shall be forgiven.  Great uncertainty overhangs the doctrine of the Divine mercy, from the position of natural religion, and it is only within the province of revealed truth that the uncertainty is removed.  Apart from a distinct and direct promise from the lips of God Himself that He will forgive sin, no human creature can be sure that sin will ever be forgiven.  Let us, therefore, look into the subject carefully, and see the reason why man, if left to himself and his spontaneous reflections, doubts whether there is mercy in the Holy One for a transgressor, and fears that there is none, and why a special revelation is consequently required, to dispel the doubt and the fear.

The reason lies in the fact, implied in the text, that the exercise of justice is necessary, while that of mercy is optional.  “I will have mercy on whom I please to have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I please to have compassion.”  It is a principle inlaid in the structure of the human soul, that the transgression of law must be visited with retribution.  The pagan conscience, as well as the Christian, testifies that “the Soul that sinneth it shall die.”  There is no need of quoting from pagan philosophers to prove this.  We should be compelled to cite page after page, should we enter upon the documentary evidence.  Take such a tract, for example, as that of Plutarch, upon what he denominates “the slow vengeance of the Deity;” read the reasons which he assigns for the apparent delay, in this world, of the infliction of punishment upon transgressors; and you will perceive that the human mind, when left to its candid and unbiassed convictions, is certain that God is a holy Being and will visit iniquity with penalty.  Throughout this entire treatise, composed by a man who probably never saw the Scriptures of either the New or the Old Dispensation, there runs a solemn and deep consciousness that the Deity is necessarily obliged, by the principles of justice, to mete out a retribution to the violator of law.  Plutarch is engaged with the very same question that the apostle Peter takes up, in his second Epistle, when he answers the objection of the scoffer who asks:  Where is the promise of God’s coming in judgment?  The apostle replies to it, by saying that for the Eternal Mind one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, and that therefore “the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness;” and Plutarch answers it in a different manner, but assumes and affirms with the same positiveness and certainty that the vengeance will ultimately come.  No reader of this