"What is grace?" I do not know anything like it in the whole world. Let us suppose a criminal, guilty of such crimes as to make him an object of the deepest abhorrence, standing condemned before the judge. Mercy would be a great thing shown to such an one, but if it were possible in the heart of a human judge to love such an one, so utterly worthless and undeserving, that would indeed be a wonder. But what would be thought if the judge so loved the poor guilty one as to put himself really in the place of the prisoner; bear the full penalty of all his crimes, and then take him into his own house, make him partner with himself; and say, "As long as I live, all that I have is yours"? Ah! tell me where among the cold-hearted sons of men, where was ever grace shown like this? No! No! The glory of this grace belongs alone to my God. Oh, how shall I tell of His wondrous grace!

My reader, you may have heard of it by the hearing of the ear, but has this grace ever reached your heart by the power of the Spirit of God? That God should thus love the guilty—yes, the ungodly! the lost!—as to send His own Son in sweetest grace to take their place, in purest grace to bear all their sins in His own body on the tree is beyond the reach of human thought! Oh, look at the cross where God in grace met man's greatest need.

Do you in your very heart believe it? Then you may cast yourself before such a God, confessing all your sins, your wretchedness, your misery; spread it all before Him. Do not try to make yourself a bit better than you are before Him. He will pardon the confessing sinner in faithfulness to the blood of Jesus. Jesus died that God might be just, not only in pardoning but in justifying every sinner that believes.

But oh, this is not all. God in pure grace takes the utterly unworthy sinner, pardoned and justified, into perfect partnership or oneness with Himself in the ever-blessed Lord Jesus. God by this little paper can in the wonders of His grace, meet a murderer, a drunkard, a harlot, or one deceived by mere religion. Oh, God grant it. May this be your happy portion—pardoned, justified, forever one with Christ.

—C.S.