with us.  Hence “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” very much as the spirit of man is the life of his body.  In the early part of his ministry he had told these very disciples that he came to fulfill the law and the prophets.  He fulfilled the law of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments to the extent of every jot and tittle, from its lowest natural to its highest spiritual requirement and significance.  The prophecies likewise all centered in him, and found in him their fulfillment; not, however, in their fullest development, for eternity alone will witness this; but they disclose in him their spirit and life.  “Thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:  and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

These eleven disciples, from this time on to do the work of apostles, had been with the Lord in nearly all of his public ministry and life.  They knew how he had overcome in temptation; how victorious he had been in his conflicts with the accusing and fault-finding Jews, and how patient and forgiving he had been in his trial before Pilate and the high priest.  They were witnesses of the purity of his character and life; of the disinterested love he bore toward all within his reach; of the good will toward men manifested by his going about doing good wherever he went.  But the point above all other points in his character in which all poor sinners are most deeply interested is the duty and work he here laid upon these eleven apostles:  the commission he gave them, that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name.  They were witnesses of his mercy so often shown to sinners of the lowest and vilest character.  Did he ever send one away empty?  If you will read the four Gospels in which are recorded the life of Jesus Christ you may be surprised to see how often he said, “Thy sins are forgiven.”  Once when he was in a Pharisee’s house a woman in the city, who was a sinner, washed his feet with her tears of penitence, and he said:  “Her sins which are many are forgiven.”  Some people brought to him a man sick of the palsy lying on a bed.  And Jesus seeing their faith said to the sick of the palsy:  “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven.”  This man’s sins were remitted, because remitted and forgiven have the same meaning.

I must here call special attention to one point in all the miracles of healing wrought by the Lord, and that point has relation to the cause of all our woe.  It is the sin of man.  To the impotent man who had lain by the pool thirty and six years, unable to get in, after being healed, the Lord when he met him in the Temple said:  “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee.”  Paul says:  “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.”  Death of the body is the point at which all diseases, ailments and infirmities aim; and the death, the eternal death, of the soul is the point at which all sins aim.  “Death is the wages of sin.”  “And ye are witnesses of these things.”  In relieving insane, idiotic, epileptic and dumb people of the mental ailments afflicting them, he always removed the cause by casting out the devils or evil spirits as the cause of their troubles.