a false notion of God, which the Devil (whose great aim is to hinder us from knowing our Father in Heaven) puts into men’s minds.  Man feels that he is sinful and unrighteous; the light of Christ in his heart shows him that, and it shows him at the same time that God is sinless and righteous.  ‘Then,’ he says, ‘God must hate sin;’ and there he says true.  Then steps in the slanderer, Satan, and whispers, ’But you are sinful; therefore God hates you, and wills you harm, and torture, and ruin.’  And the poor man believes that lying voice, and will believe it to the end, whether he be Christian or heathen, until he believes the Bible and the Sacraments, which tell him, ’God does not hate you:  He hates your sins, and loves you; He wills not your misery but your happiness; and therefore God’s will, yea, God’s earnest endeavour, is to raise you out of those sins of yours, which make you miserable now, and which, if you go on in them, must bring of themselves everlasting misery to you.’  Of themselves; not by any arbitrary decree of God (whereof the Bible says not one single word from beginning to end), that He will inflict on you so much pain for so much sin:  but by the very nature of sin; for to sin is to be parted from God, in whose presence alone is life, and therefore sin is, to be in death.  Sin is, to be at war with God, who is love and peace; and therefore to be in lovelessness, hatred, war, and misery.  Sin is, to act contrary to the constitution which God gave man, when He said, ’Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;’ and therefore sin is a disease in human nature, and like all other diseases, must, unless it is checked, go on everlastingly and perpetually breeding weakness, pain and torment.  And out of that God is so desirous to raise you, that He spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for you, if by any means He might raise you out of that death of sin to the life of righteousness—­to a righteous life; to a life of Duty—­to a dutiful life, like His Son Jesus Christ’s life; for that must go on, if you go on in it, producing in you everlastingly and perpetually all health and strength, usefulness and happiness in this world and all worlds to come.

But men will not hear that voice.  The fact is, that simply to do right is too difficult for them, and too humbling also.  They are too proud to like being righteous only with Christ’s righteousness, and too slothful also; and so they go about like the old Pharisees, to establish a righteousness of their own; one which will pamper their self-conceit by seeming very strange, and farfetched, and difficult, so as to enable them to thank God every day that they are not as other men are; and yet one which shall really not be as difficult as the plain homely work of being good sons, good fathers, good husbands, good masters, good servants, good subjects, good rulers.  And so they go about to establish a righteousness of their own (which can be no righteousness at all, for God’s