What more reasonable course, therefore, than to conform to the necessities of our condition.  The principal part of wisdom is to take things as they are, and act accordingly.  Are we, then, sinners, and in fear for the final result of our life?  Though it may seem to us like running into fire, we must nevertheless betake ourselves first and immediately to that Being who hates and punishes sin.  Though we see nothing but condemnation and displeasure in those holy eyes, we must nevertheless approach them just and simply as we are.  We must say with king David in a similar case, when he had incurred the displeasure of God:  “I am in a great strait; [yet] let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for very great are his mercies” (1 Chron. xx. 13).  We must suffer the intolerable brightness to blind and blast us in our guiltiness, and let there be an actual contact between the sin of our soul and the holiness of our God.  If we thus proceed, in accordance with the facts of our case and our position, we shall meet with a great and joyful surprise.  Flinging ourselves helpless, and despairing of all other help,—­rashly, as it will seem to us, flinging ourselves off from the position where we now are, and upon which we must inevitably perish, we shall find ourselves, to our surprise and unspeakable joy, caught in everlasting, paternal arms.  He who loses his life,—­he who dares to lose his life,—­shall find it.

2.  Secondly:  In all our religious anxiety, we should make a full and plain statement of everything to God.  God loves to hear the details of our sin, and our woe.  The soul that pours itself out as water will find that it is not like water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.  Even when the story is one of shame and remorse, we find it to be mental relief, patiently and without any reservation or palliation, to expose the whole not only to our own eye but to that of our Judge.  For, to this very thing have we been invited.  This is precisely the “reasoning together” which God proposes to us.  God has not offered clemency to a sinful world, with the expectation or desire that there be on the part of those to whom it is offered, such a stinted and meagre confession, such a glozing over and diminution of sin, as to make that clemency appear a very small matter.  He well knows the depth and the immensity of the sin which He proposes to pardon, and has made provision accordingly.  In the phrase of Luther, it is no painted sinner who is to be forgiven, and it is no painted Saviour who is offered.  The transgression is deep and real, and the atonement is deep and real.  The crime cannot be exaggerated, neither can the expiation.  He, therefore, who makes the plainest and most child-like statement of himself to God, acts most in accordance with the mind, and will, and gospel of God.  If man only be hearty, full, and unreserved in confession, he will find God to be hearty, full, and unreserved in absolution.