In order to have "a conscience void of offense toward God, and toward men" how long has it been since I had to humble myself and be "put . . . to an open shame" before my family, or my business friend, or my Sunday school class, or my congregation?  Dare I say that I have offended none and that the Holy Spirit has not pleaded with me in some such connection to obey Him?  Christ was willingly set at naught, willingly classed with criminals.  He willingly died to rid me of sin.  Let me, then, not pamper, but pour contempt on all my pride.  Let me go at once and humble myself.  If I will not take my sin to the place of shame, cost me what it may to get rid of it, how can I claim the cutting-off power of Calvary?  I am clear out of harmony with the Cross.  Confession of sin implies rejection of sin.  Its power is broken only as we come into harmony with the Cross.  But the Cross is no place of concealment, of hiding, of covering sin.  It is the place where we break with sin, the place of exposure, of guilt, of open shame.  Let me be willing to lose face and abide by all the consequences.  If Christ died to rid me of sin, should I not rather die than retain it?  But if we are not yet sick enough of sin to be rid of sin, we can only bow, and bleed, and hug our chains, until we are "sick unto death" of sinful self.  We must be driven out of our unholy duplicity and made to own our double-mindedness.

But God is good.  Christ is a jealous lover.  He wants every believer delivered.  He will not shrink from reducing you to shame and despair if only you may be exposed to the power generated on your behalf at Calvary.  You must learn by kindness or by terror.  God's sword of providence may be laid successively to every tic that binds you to self and sin.  Wealth, and health, and friends, may fall before that sword.  The inward fabric of your life will go to pieces.  Your joy will depart.  Smitten within and without, burned and peeled and blasted, you may finally, amidst the dreadful baptism, be driven from the sinful inconsistency of living for yourself.  You may at length be disposed (blessed word--sweet compulsion) to yield self over to the victory and undoing of Calvary.  Oh, the glorious power of the Cross!  How can we longer hold out against it?  All the power generated at Calvary is at your disposal.

In Bone of His Bone, F. J. Huegel tells about the strange lot of certain young ladies employed in a laboratory where contact with radium is inevitable.  Upon entering this factory they know their fate is sealed.  They will die.  After a limited time they are released from their work with a handsome check for $10,000.  Doctors have examined girls who have thus toiled in contact with radium and have found by means of the X ray that a strange fire consuming the life burns in their bones.  This most highly concentrated force is killing them.  But a still more highly concentrated force was released at Calvary.  There Heaven's radium was focused upon the great cancer of humanity's sin and shame.  Radium kills.  There is no power under Heaven that can stand its concentrated dynamic.  "The Cross kills.  The man who exposes himself to Calvary soon discovers that a hidden fire burns within his bones." Oh, let me, then, put no limit to its concentrated force.  May its death-dealing, yea, life-giving and healing rays penetrate my most secret life, until its hidden fire burns in all the bones of my inmost being.  Let the radium of the Crucified be applied again and again.  It is a process.  But let me not fear to expose myself to the divine treatment.  If I am indeed sick of shams and hollow-hearted pretense--if my heart is hot with a veritable "furnace of desire" for deliverance--if my soul thirsts for the wells of living water, the full-orbed message of Calvary will be welcomed with joy unspeakable and full of glory.  In all the gladness of Christ's glorious triumph let me say again and yet again: I have been and am crucified with Christ, it is no more I that live but Christ that liveth in me,--liveth in me, even me,--His own death-resurrection life, a life of death to sin and aliveness unto God.