but through the narrow gate of repentance.  There is no true reception of the gift of Christ which does not begin with a vivid and heart-broken consciousness of my own sin.  We can pass into, and abide in, the large room of joyous acceptance and fellowship, but we must reach it by a narrow path walled in by gloomy rocks and trodden with bleeding feet.  The penitent knowledge of oar sin is the first step towards the triumphant knowledge of Christ’s righteousness as ours.  Only they who have called out in the agony of their souls, ’Lord, save us, we perish,’ have truly learned the love of God, and truly possess the salvation that is in Christ.

II.  Man’s plea of ‘Not Guilty.’

That such an answer should be given to such a charge is a strange, solemn fact, which tragically confirms the true indictment.  The effect of all sin is to make us less conscious of its presence, as persons in an unventilated room are not aware of its closeness.  It is with profound truth that the Apostle speaks of being hardened by the ‘deceitfulness’ of sin.  It comes to us in a cloud and enfolds us in obscure mist.  Like white ants, it never works in the open, but makes a tunnel or burrows under ground, and, hidden in some piece of furniture, eats away all its substance whilst it seems perfectly solid.  The man’s perception of the standard of duty is enfeebled.  We lose our sense of the moral character of any habitual action, just as a man who has lived all his life in a slum sees little of its hideousness, and knows nothing of green fields and fresh air.  Conscience is silenced by being neglected.  It can be wrongly educated and perverted, so that it may regard sin as doing God’s service; and the only judgment in which it can be absolutely trusted is the declaration that it is right to do right, while all its other decisions as to what is right may be biassed by self-interest; but the force with which it pronounces its only unalterable decision depends on the whole tenor of the life of the man.  The sins which are most in accordance with our characters, and are therefore most deeply rooted in us, are those which we are least likely to recognise as sins.  So, the more sinful we are, the less we know it; therefore there is need for a fixed standard outside of us.  The light on the deck cannot guide us; there must be the lighthouse on the rock.  This sad answer of the heart untouched by God’s appeal prevents all further access of God’s love to that heart.  That love can only enter when the reply to its indictment is, ‘I have despised Thy name.’

Let us not forget the New Testament modification of the divine accusation.  ‘In Christ’ is the Name of God fully and finally revealed to men.  For us who live in the blaze of the ineffable brightness of the revelation, our attitude towards Him who brings it is the test of our ‘hallowing of the Name’ which He brings.  He Himself has varied Malachi’s indictment when He said, ’He that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me.’  Our sin is