forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared.' Oh, dear brethren!
unless you know God as the God that has forgiven you, your knowledge of
Him is but shallow and incomplete, and you know not the deepest
blessings that flow to them who find that this is life eternal to know
the only true God as the all-forgiving Father.

Note the connection between the Psalmist's plea and the New Testament
plea. David said, 'For Thy name's sake, pardon,' we say, 'For Christ's
sake, forgive.' Are the two diverse? Is the fruit diverse from the bud?
Is the complete noonday diverse from the blessed morning twilight?
Christ _is_ the Name of God, the Revealer of the divine heart and mind.
When Christian men pray 'For the sake of Christ,' they are not bringing
a motive, which is to move the divine love which else lies passive and
inert, because God's love was the cause of Christ's work not Christ's
work the cause of God's love, but they are expressing their own
dependence on the Great Mediator and His work, and solemnly offering, as
the ground of all their hope, that perfect sacrifice which is the medium
by which forgiveness reaches men, and without which it is impossible
that the government of the righteous God could exist with pardon. Christ
has died; Christ, in dying, has borne the sins of the world; that is,
yours and mine. And therefore the pardon of God comes to us through that
channel, without, in the slightest degree, trenching on the awfulness of
the divine holiness or weakening the sanctities of God's righteous
retributive law. 'For Christ's sake hath forgiven us' is the daylight
which the Psalmist saw as morning dawn when he cried, 'For Thy name's
sake, pardon mine iniquity.'

III. Lastly, note the reason for the earnest cry, 'For it is great.'

That may be a reason for the pardon; more probably it is a reason for