how slow we are to believe all that is written in our great Charter, and read to us every day out of it.  And who shall cast a stone at us for not easily believing all that is so written and read?  It is not so easy as you would think to believe in free forgiveness for all the wrongs, injuries, and offences we have ever done.  When you try to believe it about yourselves, you will find how hard it is to accept that covenant and always to keep your feet firm upon it.  That the forgiveness is absolutely free is its first great difficulty.  If it had cost us all we could ever do or suffer, both in this world and in the world to come, then we could have come to terms with our Prince far more easily; but that our forgiveness should be absolutely free, it is that that so staggers us.  When I was a little boy I was once wandering through the streets of a large city seeing the strange sights.  I had even less Latin in my head that day than I had money in my pocket.  But I was hungry for knowledge and eager to see rare and wonderful things.  Over the door of a public institution, containing a museum and other interesting things, I tried to read a Latin scroll.  I could not make out the whole of the writing; I could only make out one word, and not even that, as the event soon showed.  The word was gratia, or some modification of gratia, with some still deeper words engraven round about it.  But on the strength of that one word I mounted the steps and rang the bell, and asked the porter if I could see the museum.  He told me that the cost of admission was such and such.  Little as it was, it was too much for me, and I came down the steps feeling that the Latin writing above the door had entirely deceived me.  It has not been the last time that my bad Latin has brought me to shame and confusion of face.  But Latin, or Greek, or only English, or not even English, there is no deception and no confusion here.  Forgiveness is really of free grace.  It costs absolutely nothing, the door is open; or, if it is not open, then knock, and it shall be opened, without money and without price.

‘Free and full.’  I could imagine a free forgiveness which was not also full.  I could imagine a charter that would have run somehow thus:  Free forgiveness and full, up to a firmly fixed limit.  Free and full forgiveness for sins of ignorance and even of infirmity and frailty; for small sins and for great sins, too, up to a certain age of life and stage of guilt.  Free and full forgiveness up to a certain line, and then, that black line of reprobation, as Samuel Rutherford says.  Indeed, it is no imagination.  I have felt oftener than once that I was at last across that black line, and gone and lost for ever.  But no—­

   ’While the lamp holds on to burn,
   The greatest sinner may return.’

‘Free, full, and everlasting.’  Pope Innocent the Third came to the rescue of King John and issued a Papal bull revoking and annulling Magna Charta.  But neither king, nor pope, nor devil can revoke or annul our new Covenant.  It is free, full, and everlasting.  If God be for us, who can be against us?  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.