We now perceive how God pardons sin, and yet punishes us for it.  The misery, sin brings upon us, is our just punishment, and to be released from it, by the free grace of God, through death and the resurrection, is our pardon and redemption—­For example—­we say, in a cloudy day, “the sun does not shine;” but still he does.  The clouds, just above our heads, prevent his rays from shining upon us.  The change is not in the sun.  The clouds disperse, and we say, “the sun shines,” while in fact he is ever the same.  The Scriptures say, “our God is a sun.”  He is unchangeably the same in all his brilliant perfections.  “Sin like a cloud, and transgression like a thick cloud,” rise over the mind and darken the understanding.  Through this dark medium we look up to God, and think he has changed—­that he is angry, and thunders are rolling from his hand, while in fact the whole change is in us.  The moment our minds are enlightened by the beams of truth we rejoice, and say God has forgiven us.  We receive an evidence of pardon, and enjoy it through faith, while God has remained unchangeably the same.

While we are children in christianity, we speak and act like children; and think if we join together, and pray as loud as we can as though the Lord were “deaf, or all asleep or on a journey,” that we can prevail, and make him do as we wish.  And while we are children, if we sin, we think the Lord is our enemy, and is angry.  Now, this is all well enough for those whose experience has gone no further.  We are not to “despise the day of small things,” but kindly receive such an one as a babe in Christ, and feed him with milk.  But still it does appear to be a pity that thousands, under the gospel, should live and die children.

“Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”  Now, we are to forgive as God does.  How is that—­To hold a grudge one day, and if they ask our pardon, to forgive them the next?  No, we must uniformly possess a kind, tender-hearted, forgiving spirit, laying up nought against any one.  Forgiveness does not consist in laying up a store of malice and vengeance, till our enemy come, and formally ask our forgiveness.  No—­he might never come, and then we could never forgive him.  We are commanded to love and forgive our enemies whether they ask it, or not.  So did our Saviour on the cross, and we are to exercise the same spirit of benevolence and meekness.  We must, as our context says—­put away all malice, wrath, and evil speaking from among us, and be kind, tender-hearted and forgiving.

Our Father in heaven is the most lovely and adorable of all beings!  Under the light of his character, every uncomfortable thought vanishes, and the dawn of a blessed eternity bursts upon us in a flood of glory.  By faith we penetrate the veil of immortality, and read our pardon, and justification in letters of blood.  Within that veil, we anchor our hope.  Faith triumphs over the ruins of death, smiles at the darkness of the tomb, and through Christ within, the hope of glory, bids defiance to the crushing hand of death, and lights up its dreary mansions with the cheering beams of immortal day.