March 14

“The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”—1 John 1:7.

THERE is a river, the streams of which make glad the City of God. It is a river whose waters are crimson red rather than crystal clear. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin; His life-blood, shed for our redemption on the shameful tree.

So many have proved the potency of this blessed flood—a great multitude which no man can number. From the East and the West, the North and the South; from the early dawn of Christ, and the cloistered Middle Age, and the modern home—they have pressed to its brink, and they are pressing still. Whosoever is willing may stoop down and drink and live.

Such continuous and permanent efficacy resides in the fountain and stream. It is not like the Pool of Bethesda, endowed with a strange and vitalising virtue only at intervals. The dying Lamb never loses His power to save. The Cross is at every moment the instrument of pardon. The blood cleanseth—retains its capacity of cleansing perennially, age after age.

And so universally and omnipotently successful these blood-red waters are. From all my sin they will purge me, my secret and my presumptuous sin, my sin of youth and of age, my sin against others and against myself, my sin when I was a stranger to God and my darker and hatefuller sin since I came home to Him.

There never was a flood like this. Exploration has not discovered its like, nor imagination conceived it. It is peerless, solitary, alone. Surely I have washed and am daily washing in it, that I may be clean.