at He might teach us
not to fear death and hell; that He might know how to comfort us in the
hour of death, and in the day of judgment, when on our sick-bed, or in
some bitter shame and trouble, the lying devil is telling us that we are
damned and lost, and forsaken by God, and every sin we ever did rises up
and stares us in the face.

_National Sermons_.

Whatever may be the mysteries of life and death, there is one mystery
which the Cross of Christ reveals to us, and that is the infinite and
absolute goodness of God. Let all the rest remain a mystery so long as
the mystery of the Cross of Christ gives us faith for all the rest.
Faith, I say. The mystery of evil, of terror, of death, the gospel does
not pretend to solve, but it tells us that the mystery is proved to be
soluble; for God Himself has taken upon Himself the task of solving it;
and Christ has proved by His own act, that if there be evil in the world,
it is none of His, for He hates it, fights against it, and He fought
against it to the death. The Cross says, Have faith in God. Ask no more
of Him, "Why hast thou made me thus?" Ask no more, "Why do the wicked
prosper on the earth?" Ask no more, "Whence pain and death, war and
famine, earthquake and tempest, and all the ills to which flesh is heir?"
All fruitless questioning, all peevish repinings are precluded henceforth
by the death and passion of Christ.

Dost thou suffer? Thou canst not suffer more than the Son of God. Dost
thou sympathise with thy fellow-sufferers? Thou canst not sympathise
more than the Son of God. Dost thou long to right them, to deliver them,
even at the price of thine own blood? Thou canst not long more ardently
than the Son of God, who carried His longing into act, and died for them
and thee. What if the end be not yet? What if evil still endure? What
if the medicine have not yet conquered the disease? Have patience, have
faith, have hope, as thou standest at the foot of Christ's Cross, and
holdest fast to it, as the Anchor of thy soul and reason, as well as of
thy heart. For however ill the world may go, or seem to go, the Cross is
the everlasting token that God so loved the world, that He spared not His
only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it. Whatsoever else is
doubtful this at least is sure, that God must conquer, because God is
good; that Evil must perish, because God hates Evil, even to the death.

_Westminster Sermons_.

How shall the bottomless pit