'The sorrows of death compassed me,' sings the Psalmist, and 'the pains
of hell gat hold upon me; I found trouble and sorrow.' What, you may
well ask, were those pains of hell that gat such hold of David while yet
he was a living and unreprobated man? Was it not too strong language to
use about any earthly experience, however terrible, to call it the pains
of hell? Ask that man whose sin has found him out what he thinks the
pains of hell were in David's case, and he will tell you that
remorse--unsoftened, unsweetened, unquenchable remorse--is hell; at any
rate, it is hell upon earth; and till he confessed his sin it was David's
hell. Sin taken up and laid by God's hand on the sinner's conscience,
that makes that sinner's conscience hell. And, then, do we not read that
Jehovah laid on our Surety the sin of us all till He was three hours in
hell for us, and came out of it, as Rutherford says, with the keys of
hell at His proud girdle? And it is with those captured keys that He now
unlocks the true hell-gate in every guilty sinner's conscience.

'He comes the prisoners to relieve
In Satan's bondage held;
The gates of brass before Him burst,
The iron fetters yield.

. . . . . .

We may not know, we cannot tell
What pains He had to bear,
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin;