Again: I see Holiness, Justice, and Truth, gazing upon me from the very heart of the gospel, like so many eyes of consuming fire. I tremble before them, like Moses before the burning bush, or Israel at the base of Sinai. Yet do I wish to behold this terrible glory, for it is mingled with milder beams of mercy. I take off my shoes, and approach that I may contemplate. “Truly, God is in this place!” I cannot live in sin under the intense blaze of his countenance. But here also I find the cleft of the Rock, even the Rock of Ages, wherein he hides me with his hand, while he makes all his goodness pass before me, and proclaims to me his name—“The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and by no means clearing the guilty!”
“The word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword; piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow; and discerning”—revealing—condemning—correcting—“the thoughts and intents of the heart.” It unlocks my soul, and sits upon its throne; an infallible judge over all my secret imaginations, purposes, and feelings; bringing them under its own perfect law; examining them in the light of spotless holiness, inflexible justice, and eternal truth. And when I shrink from the scrutiny, overwhelmed with a sense of my corruption, and confessing my guilt with a broken and contrite heart, then it speaks to me of the boundless love of God, and the infinite merit of Christ; and “a still small voice” directs my sight to the holy of holies; where I see, through the rent vail, the King of Zion, sitting upon his throne of grace, more glorious than the ancient Shekinah upon the mercy-seat. I approach with joyful confidence, and find him invested with my own nature, “God manifest in the flesh,” his royal garments red with sacrificial blood; and again I hear the still small voice—“Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace!” And when the dark mountains of tribulation rise up before me, I see their tops gilded with beams of love; and when I look into the valley of the shadow of death, I see it brightening with the footsteps of the Son of God; and when the soul sits solitary and dejected in her mortal prison, longing for the wings of a dove, that she may fly away and be at rest, she sees the eyes of her Deliverer looking through the crevices of the wall, and hears his voice at the grated window—“Fear not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God!”