The simple question, then, which, meets us is:  Wilt thou know thyself here and now, that thou mayest accept and feel God’s pity in Christ’s blood, or wilt thou keep within the screen, and not know thyself until beyond the grave, and then feel God’s judicial wrath?  The self-knowledge, remember, must come in the one way or the other.  It is a simple question of time; a simple question whether it shall come here in this world, where the blood of Christ “freely flows,” or in the future world, where “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin.”  Turn the matter as we will, this is the sum and substance,—­a sinful man must either come to a thorough self-knowledge, with a hearty repentance and a joyful pardon, in this life; or he must come to a thorough, self-knowledge, with a total despair and an eternal damnation, in the other.  God is not mocked.  God’s great pity in the blood of Christ must not be trifled with.  He who refuses, or neglects, to institute that self-examination which leads to the sense of sin, and the felt need of Christ’s work, by this very fact proves that he does not desire to know his own heart, and that he has no wish to repent of sin.  But he who will not even look at his sin,—­what does not he deserve from that Being who poured out His own blood for it?  He who refuses even to open his eyes upon that bleeding Lamb of God,—­what must not he expect from the Lion of the tribe of Judah, in the day of judgment?  He who by a life of apathy, and indifference to sin, puts himself out of all relations to the Divine pity,—­what must he experience in eternity, but the operations of stark, unmitigated law?

Find out your sin, then.  God will forgive all that is found.  Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.  The great God delights to forgive, and is waiting to forgive.  But, sin must be seen by the sinner, before it can be pardoned by the Judge.  If you refuse at this point; if you hide yourself from yourself; if you preclude all feeling and conviction upon the subject of sin, by remaining ignorant of it; if you continue to live an easy, thoughtless life in sin, then you cannot be forgiven, and the measure of God’s love with which He would have blessed you, had you searched yourself and repented, will be the measure of God’s righteous wrath with which He will search you, and condemn you, because you have not.

[Footnote 1:  “It is easy,”—­says one of the keenest and most incisive of theologians,—­“for any one in the cloisters of the schools to indulge himself in idle speculations on the merit of works to justify men; but when he comes into the presence of God, he must bid farewell to these amusements, for there the business is transacted with seriousness.  To this point must our attention be directed, if we wish to make any useful inquiry concerning true righteousness:  How we can answer the celestial Judge when He shall call us to an account?  Let us place that