Then is the man fit indeed to come to church, sins and all:- if he
carry his sins into church not to carry them out again safely and
carefully, as we are all too apt to do, but to cast them down at the
foot of Christ's cross, in the hope (and no man ever hoped that hope
in vain)--that he will be lightened of that burden, and leave some of
them at least behind him. Ay, no man, I say, ever hoped that in
vain. No man ever yet felt the burden of his sins really intolerable
and unbearable, but what the burden of his sins was taken off him
before all was over, and Christ's righteousness given to him instead.

Then a man is fit, not only to come to church, but to come to Holy
Communion on Christmas-day, and all days. For then and there he will
find put into words for him the very deepest sorrows and longings of
his heart. There he may say as heartily as he can (and the more
heartily the better), 'I acknowledge and bewail my manifold sins and
wickedness. The remembrance of them is grievous unto me; the burden
of them is intolerable:' but there he will hear Christ promising in
return to pardon and deliver him from all his sins, to confirm and
strengthen him in all goodness. That last is what he ought to want;
and if he wants it, he will surely find it.

He may join there with the whole universe of God in crying, 'Holy,
holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of Thy
glory:' and still in the same breath he may confess again his
unworthiness so much as to gather up the crumbs under God's table,
and cast himself simply and utterly upon the eternal property of
God's eternal essence, which is--always to have mercy. But he will
hear forthwith Christ's own answer--'If thou art bad, I can and will
make thee good. My blood shall wash away thy sin: my body shall
preserve thee, body, soul, and spirit, to the everlasting life of