lacerated conscience of Martin Luther before he found the Cross, examine the anxiety and gloom of Chalmers before he saw the Lamb of God, for proof that this is so.  These men, at first, were most earnest in their use of the law in order to re-instate themselves in right relations with God’s justice.  But the more they toiled in this direction, the less they succeeded.  Burning with inward anguish, and with God’s arrows sticking fast in him, shall the transgressor get relief from the attribute of Divine justice, and the qualities of law?  Shall the ten commandments of Sinai, in any of their forms or uses, send a cooling and calming virtue through the hot conscience?  With these kindling flashes in his guilt-stricken spirit, shall he run into the very identical fire that kindled them?  Shall he try to quench them in that “Tophet which is ordained of old; which is made deep and large; the pile of which is fire and much wood, and the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle it?” And yet such is, in reality, the attempt of every man who, upon being convicted in his conscience of guilt before God, endeavors to attain peace by resolutions to alter his course of conduct, and strenuous endeavors to obey the commands of God,—­in short by relying upon the law in any form, as a means of reconciliation.  Such is the suicidal effort of every man who substitutes the law for the gospel, and expects to produce within himself the everlasting peace of God, by anything short of the atonement of God.

Let us fix it, then, as a fact, that the feeling of culpability and unreconciliation can never be removed, so long as we do not look entirely away from our own character and works to the mere pure mercy of God in the blood of Christ.  The transgressor can never atone for crime by anything that he can suffer, or anything that he can do.  He can never establish a ground of justification, a reason why he should be forgiven, by his tears, or his prayers, or his acts.  Neither the law, nor his attempts to obey the law, can re-instate him in his original relations to justice, and make him perfect again in respect to his conscience.  The ten commandments can never silence his inward misgivings, and his moral fears; for they are given for the very purpose of producing misgivings, and causing fears.  “The law worketh wrath.”  And if this truth and fact be clearly perceived, and boldly acknowledged to his own mind, it will cut him off from all these legal devices and attempts, and will shut him up to the Divine mercy and the Divine promise in Christ, where alone he is safe.

We have thus seen that one of the two things necessary in order that apostate man may become perfect again,—­viz., the pacification of his conscience,—­cannot be obtained in and by the law, in any of its forms or uses.  Let us now examine the other thing necessary in order to human perfection, and see what the law can do towards it.