And there comes to each of us a mighty Deliverer, who breaks the gates of brass, and who cuts the bars of iron in sunder.  Christ comes to us.  By His death He has borne away the guilt; by His living Spirit He will bear away the dominion of sin from our hearts; and if the Son will make us free we shall be free indeed.  Oh! ponder that deep truth, I pray you, which the Lord Christ has spoken in words that carry conviction in their very simplicity to every conscience:  ’He that committeth sin is the slave of sin.’  And as you feel sometimes—­and you all feel sometimes—­the catch of the fetter on your wrists when you would fain stretch out your hands to good, listen as to a true gospel to this old word which, in its picturesque imagery, carries a truth that should be life.  To us all ‘the Breaker is gone up before us,’ the prison gates are open.  Follow His steps, and take the freedom which He gives; and be sure that you ’stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not entangled again with any yoke of bondage.’

Men and women!  Some of you are the slaves of your own lusts.  Some of you are the slaves of the world’s maxims.  Some of you are held in bondage by some habit that you abominate, but cannot get away from.  Here is freedom for you.  The dark walls of the prison are round us all.  ’The Scripture hath shut up all in sin, that He might have mercy upon all.’  Blessed be His name!  As the angel came to the sleeping Apostle, and to his light touch the iron gates swung obedient on their hinges, and Roman soldiers who ought to have watched their prey were lulled to sleep, and fetters that held the limbs dropped as if melted; so, silently, in His meek and merciful strength, the Christ comes to us all, and the iron gate which leadeth out into freedom opens of its own accord at His touch, and the fetters fall from our limbs, and we go forth free men.  ’The Breaker is gone up before us.’

II.  Again, take another application of this same figure found in Scripture, which sets forth Jesus Christ as being the Opener of the path to God.

’I am the Way and the Truth and the Life, no man cometh to the Father but by Me,’ said He.  And again, ’By a new and living way which He hath opened for us through the veil’ (that is to say, His flesh), we can have free access ‘with confidence by the faith of Him.’  That is to say, if we rightly understand our natural condition, it is not only one of bondage to evil, but it is one of separation from God.  Parts of the divine character are always beautiful and sweet to every human heart when it thinks about them.  Parts of the divine character stand frowning before a man who knows himself for what he is; and conscience tells us that between God and us there is a mountain of impediment piled up by our own evil.  To us Christ comes, the Path-finder and the Path; the Pioneer who breaks the way for us through all the hindrances, and leads us up to the presence of God.