work of Christ, because it has an atoning virtue, and can pacify a perturbed and angry conscience; can wash out the stains of guilt that are grained into it; can extract the sting of sin which ulcerates and burns there.  It is the idea of expiation and satisfaction that we now single out, and press upon your notice.  Sin must be expiated,—­expiated either by the blood of the criminal, or by the blood of his Substitute.  You must either die for your own sin, or some one who is able and willing must die for you.  This is founded and fixed in the nature of God, and the nature of man, and the nature of sin.  There is an eternal and necessary connection between crime and penalty.  The wages of sin is death.  But, all this inexorable necessity has been completely provided for, by the sacrificial work of the Son of God.  In the gospel, God satisfies His own justice for the sinner, and now offers you the full benefit of the satisfaction, if you will humbly and penitently accept it.  “What compassion can equal the words of God the Father addressed to the sinner condemned to eternal punishment, and having no means of redeeming himself:  ’Take my Only-Begotten Son, and make Him an offering for thyself;’ or the words of the Son:  ‘Take Me, and ransom thy soul?’ For this is what both say, when they invite and draw man to faith in the gospel."[4] In urging you, therefore, to trust in Christ’s vicarious sufferings for sin, instead of going down to hell and suffering for sin in your own person; in entreating you to escape the stroke of justice upon yourself, by believing in Him who was smitten in your stead, who “was wounded for your transgressions and bruised for your iniquities;” in beseeching you to let the Eternal Son of God be your Substitute in this awful judicial transaction; we are summoning you to no arbitrary and irrational act.  The peace of God which it will introduce into your conscience, and the love of God which it will shed abroad through your soul, will be the most convincing of all proofs that the act of faith in the great Atonement does no violence to the ideas and principles of the human constitution.  No act that contravenes those intuitions and convictions which are part and particle of man’s moral nature could possibly produce peace and joy.  It would be revolutionary and anarchical.  The soul could not rest an instant.  And yet it is the uniform testimony of all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, that the act of simple confiding faith in His blood and righteousness is the most peaceful, the most joyful act they ever performed,—­nay, that it was the first blessed experience they ever felt in this world of sin, this world of remorse, this world of fears and forebodings concerning judgment and doom.

Is the question, then, of the Jews, pressing upon your mind?  Do you ask, What one particular single thing shall I do, that I may be safe for time and eternity?  Hear the answer of the Son of God Himself:  “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.”