Our Church, as you know, has embodied the testimony of John the Baptist in her service. Twice at the end of the Litany she puts the words in our lips as words of invocation,-"O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world."

When we use those words, we should be reminded of what took place on Good Friday. Each time we say them we acknowledge and confess that Christ is our only Saviour; each time we so speak we assent to the Bible statement that statement put forth so solemnly by St. Paul in 1st Corinthians-that first of all declarations, that Christ died for our sins.

And, my brethren, I need not, I am sure, urge you to hold fast your profession of that vital article of our religion. Your own necessities, your own sense of sin, will compel you to do it. What hope, let me ask, what hope could we, any of us, have of being forgiven all sin, if Jesus Christ had not died to put it away? Dare we, who have broken again and again God's righteous law, dare we look up unto Him and entreat His forgiveness, if it were not that we have this plea to put forward,-Thy Son, thine only Son, hath died for me?

Indeed I think we dare not. Take away the Atonement made by Christ, and we must still remain tied and bound by our sins; take away

the doctrine of a full and free redemption through the merits of His most precious blood, and we fall back into the condition of men who lived before the day of Christ, and who, when their sins pricked them, had recourse to the offering of slain beasts, of bulls and goats and sheep, and to a variety of self-inflicted pains; and yet who, for all that, could never attain to a sense of being forgiven.

That, I repeat, would be our state if we were even now without the knowledge of a Redeemer ; or if we, for any cause, were to let go our hold on His atoning death.

But how different is it with us now! Now, when sin pricks us, when we are possessed with a sense of guilt, when we feel the burden of our evil-doing crushing us down into the dust, and hiding God's face from us, we do not fly, as they did of old, to sacrifice and meat-offerings for sin; we do not come before God with the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer ; we do not think to propitiate Him with acts of bodily mortification and self-inflicted penance. No! but we fly at once for our refuge to the cross of Jesus Christ; we approach the Father, as He loves to be approached, through the mediation of the Son; we seek to be forgiven, to have our burden removed, to have our sin covered, not for

anything that we can do to deserve it, but solely and entirely for His merits, Who died and was buried, and rose again for us; Who, to use the strong, plain words of the Apostle, in the Lesson for this afternoon, Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed! (1 Pet. ii. 24.)

And this brings me to one other view of this great subject. We have been redeemed to God with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. We have full and free forgiveness of all our sins, on seeking it of God through His Son's atoning sacrifice. Christ is our propitiation, Christ is our mediator, Christ has made, once for all, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice!

But, brethren, do we consider enough the awful nature of that sacrifice? Do we enough bear in mind what it has cost to redeem us? Nothing less than the agonising death of the Holy One of God!

What a view does this open to us of the heinous nature of sin! What must sin be in the eyes of our Heavenly Father, when nothing short of such a remedy could be found for it! No words that I can use can adequately declare the guilt of our race that called for such an atone

ment. Sin does indeed seem more exceeding sinful, when we regard it by the light that streams from the cross on Calvary! And shall we trifle with sin? Shall we think lightly of committing it? Shall we laugh when we see others committing it? O surely not! To us, sin, whether our own sin or the sin of another, must now be looked upon as hateful; a thing to be fled from and renounced a thing when done to be grieved for, and bitterly repented of!

There is, we are told, such a thing as crucifying the Son of God afresh, renewing His grief, putting Him again to shame. And this is their offence, who, living under the Gospel, professing to have faith in Jesus Christ, yet treat with levity any sort of evil, do those things for which He died that He might put them away! Far be such an offence from us! Weak we are, and never safe a single day from falling: but if we fall, if we do commit sin, O let us still try to hate it, and loathe ourselves for being defiled with it, and turn away from the wickedness we have committed, and seek to have the stain of it wiped out, and to be made—as we may be made-clean in the blood of the Lamb!

To conclude. Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world! Look to Christ, and to Christ's death, for the pardon of all

your sins!

When your heart is troubled with the rising up of your past evil deeds, fly at once to Him for your refuge-for your refuge against despair; say at such a moment-"O Saviour of the world, who by thy cross and precious blood hast redeemed me, save me and help me, I humbly beseech thee, O Lord!"

Yes, look to the Lamb of God to take away the guilt of your sins. Look to the same quarter. Look to the Lamb of God, the holy, the innocent Jesus, agonising on your behalf upon the accursed tree, stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, to convince you that sin is not to be trifled with, that it is a deadly, life-killing thing!

Look again to the same object. Look at the Lamb of God, and the lamb-like patience with which He bore His bitter and undeserved sufferings. See Him, dumb as a sheep in the hand of its shearer, silent under taunt, not answering railing for railing, taking all the vile insults that were heaped upon Him with uncomplaining meekness, making no resistance to the will of God concerning Him, not shrinking from any part of the sorrow to which He was subjected, drinking the cup that was given Him to drink to its last dregs, made perfect through sufferings. Look, I say, not to-day alone, but in all time of your mortal trouble, in sickness, in bereavement,