emotion at the thought of the leniency that had
been extended. Though you may not appear moved while I tell you of the
law that thundered its condemnation, while I tell you of the pardon
and the peace of the Gospel I wonder if they will not overcome you.

Jesus is a safe refuge. Fort Hudson, Fort Pulaski, Fort Moultrie, Fort
Sumter, Gibraltar, Sebastopol were taken. But Jesus is a castle into
which the righteous runneth and is safe. No battering-ram can demolish
its wall. No sappers or miners can explode its ramparts, no storm-bolt
of perdition leap upon its towers. The weapons that guard this fort
are omnipotent. Hell shall unlimber its great guns as death only to
have them dismantled. In Christ our sins are pardoned, discomforted,
blotted out, forgiven. An ocean can not so easily drown a fly as the
ocean of God's forgiveness swallow up, utterly and forever, our
transgressions. He is able to save unto the uttermost.

You who have been so often overcome in a hand-to-hand fight with the
world, the flesh, and devil, try this fortress. Once here, you are
safe forever. Satan may charge up the steep, and shout amid the uproar
of the fight, Forward, to his battalions of darkness; but you will
stand in the might of the great God, your Redeemer, safe in the
refuge. The troubles of life, that once overwhelmed you, may come on
with their long wagon-trains laden with care and worryment; and you
may hear in their tramp the bereavements that once broke your heart;
but Christ is your friend, Christ your sympathizer, Christ your
reward. Safe in the refuge!

Death at last may lay the siege to your spirit, and the shadows of the
sepulcher may shake their horrors in the breeze, and the hoarse howl
of the night wind may be mingled with the cry of despair, yet you will
shout in triumph from the ramparts, and the pale horse shall be hurled
back on his haunches. Safe in the refuge! To this castle I fly. This
last fire shall but illumine its towers; and the rolling thunders of
the judgment will be the salvo of its victory.

Just after Queen Victoria had been crowned--she being only nineteen or
twenty years of age--Wellington handed her a death-warrant for her
signature. It was to take the life of a soldier in the army. She said
to Wellington: "Can there nothing good be said of this man?" He said:
"No; he is a bad soldier, and deserves to die." She took up the
death-warrant, and it trembled in her hand as she again asked: "Does
no one know