upon him, he wonders that he was so foolish and slow of heart to believe all that God himself had said concerning the “multitude” of his tender mercies.  Christian and Hopeful lay long and needlessly in the dungeon of Doubting Castle, until the former remembered that the key to all the locks was in his bosom, and had been all the while.  They needed only to take God at his word.  The anxious and fearful soul must believe the Eternal Judge implicitly, when he says:  “I will justify thee through the blood of Christ.”  God is truthful under the gospel, and under the law; in His promise of mercy, and in His threatening of eternal woe.  And “if we believe not, yet He abideth faithful; He cannot deny Himself.”  He hath promised, and He hath threatened; and, though heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle of that promise shall not fail in the case of those who confidingly trust it, nor shall one iota or scintilla of the threatening fail in the instance of those who have recklessly and rashly disbelieved it.

In respect, then, to both sides of the revelation of the Divine character,—­in respect to the threatening and the promise,—­men need to have a clear perception, and an unwavering belief.  He that doubteth in either direction is damned.  He who does not believe that God is truthful, when He declares that He will “punish iniquity, transgression and sin,” and that those upon the left hand shall “go away into everlasting punishment,” will persist in sin until he passes the line of probation and be lost.  And he who does not believe that God is truthful, when He declares that He will forgive scarlet and crimson sins through the blood of Christ, will be overcome by despair and be also lost.  But he who believes both Divine statements with equal certainty, and perceives both facts with distinct vision, will be saved.

From these two lessons of the text, we deduce the following practical directions: 

1.  First:  In all states of religious anxiety, we should betake ourselves instantly and directly to God.  There is no other refuge for the human soul but God in Christ, and if this fails us, we must renounce all hope here and hereafter.

                “If this fail,
  The pillared firmament is rottenness,
  And earth’s base built on stubble."[2]

We are, therefore, from the nature of the case, shut up to this course.  Suppose the religious anxiety arise from a sense of sin, and the fear of retribution.  God is the only Being that can forgive sins.  To whom, then, can such an one go but unto Him?  Suppose the religious anxiety arises from a sense of the perishing nature of earthly objects, and the soul feels as if all the foundation and fabric of its hope and comfort were rocking into irretrievable ruin.  God is the only Being who can help in this crisis.  In either or in any case,—­be it the anxiety of the unforgiven, or of the child of God,—­whatever be the species of mental sorrow, the human soul is by its very circumstances driven to its Maker, or else driven to destruction.