Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/261

210 of Divine Justice, and to ignore the only way of reconciliation. This, I fear, too many of our philosophers and natural theologians do. They offer Cain's "fruit of the ground," without the blood of Abel's "firstling." But it is not and cannot be accepted; for there is no way into the Holiest but by the Blood of Jesus. Natural religion can tell us, ex cathedra, nothing about this. When an anxious conscience demands to know something more of God, something of his feelings towards offenders, of his way of dealing with rebels, whether there is forgiveness with Him, and mercy,—the creatures are mute. One says, It is not in me! and another says, It is not in me! All are ominously dumb on such questions as these.

To enlighten us on these points is the grand object of the Word of God. It reveals to man the full hopelessness of his state, drawing aside the curtain from that hideous scene of eternal and utter ruin into which he had fallen by sin. It reveals also the remedy, God manifest in the flesh, bearing as a substitute human guilt, that through the blood-shedding of one spotless and infinitely perfect Victim, there might be full and free justification for every one that believeth.

When this grand inquiry, this quœstio quastionum,