Pardoning Grace

"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."  (Isaiah)

My soul! thy God summons thee to His audience chamber!  Infinite purity seeks to reason with infinite vileness!  Deity stoops to speak to dust!  Dread not the meeting.  It is the most gracious, as well as wondrous of all conferences.  Yahweh himself breaks silence!  He utters the best tidings a lost soul can hear: "God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses."  What?!  Scarlet sins, and crimson sins! and these all to be forgiven and forgotten?!  The just God "justifying" the unjust - the mightiest of all beings, the kindest of all!  Thou mightest have known thy God only as the "consuming fire," and had nothing before thee save a "fearful looking for of vengeance!"  This gracious conference bids thee dispel thy fears!  It tells thee it is no longer a fearful but a blessed thing to fall into His hands.   Hast thou closed with these His overtures?  Until thou art at peace with Him, happiness must be a stranger to thy bosom.  Though thou hast all else beside, bereft of God thou must be "bereft indeed!"  Lord, I come!  As thy pardoning grace is freely tendered, so shall I freely accept it.  May it be mine, even now to listen to the gladdening accents, "Daughter! be of good cheer! thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee."

--The Faithful Promiser, John Ross Macduff