e coming down to the rescue. But after awhile the
clock of night in Bethlehem strikes twelve, and the silver pendulum of
a star swings across the sky, and I see the King of Heaven rising up,
and He descends, and steps down from star to star, and from cloud to
cloud, lower and lower, until He touches the sheep-covered hills, and
then on to another hill, this last skull-covered, and there, at the
sharp stroke of persecution, a rill incarnadine trickles down, and we
who could not be redeemed by money are redeemed by precious and
imperial blood.

We have in this day professed Christians who are so rarefied and
etherealized that they do not want a religion of blood. What do you
want? You seem to want a religion of brains. The Bible says: "In the
blood is the life." No atonement without blood. Ought not the apostle
to know? What did he say? "Ye are redeemed not with corruptible
things, such as silver and gold, but by the precious blood of Christ."
You put your lancet into the arm of our holy religion and withdraw the
blood, and you leave it a mere corpse, fit only for the grave. Why did
God command the priests of old to strike the knife into the kid, and
the goat, and the pigeon, and the bullock, and the lamb? It was so
that when the blood rushed out from these animals on the floor of the
ancient tabernacle the people should be compelled to think of the
coming carnage of the Son of God. No blood, no atonement.

I think that God intended to impress us with the vividness of that
color. The green of the grass, the blue of the sky, would not have
startled and aroused us like this deep crimson. It is as if God had
said: "Now, sinner, wake up and see what the Saviour endured for you.
This is not water. This is not wine. It is blood. It is the blood of
my own Son. It is the blood of the Immaculate. It is the blood of
God." Without the shedding of blood is no remission. There has been
many a man who in courts of law has pleaded "not guilty," who
nevertheless has been condemned because there was blood found on his
hands, or blood found in his room; and what shall we do in the last
day if it be found that we have recrucified the Lord of Glory and have
never repented of it? You must believe in the blood or die. No
escape. Unless you let the sacrifice of Jesus go in your stead you
yourself must suffer. It is either Christ's blood or your blood.

"Oh," says some one, "the thought of blood sickens me." Good. God
intended it to sicken yo