But be a sin great or small, it cannot damn a man once he has found God.
You may kill and hang for it, you may rob or rape; the moment you truly
repent and set yourself to such atonement and reparation as is possible
there remains no barrier between you and God. Directly you cease to hide
or deny or escape, and turn manfully towards the consequences and the
setting of things right, you take hold again of the hand of God. Though
you sin seventy times seven times, God will still forgive the poor rest
of you. Nothing but utter blindness of the spirit can shut a man off
from God.
There is nothing one can suffer, no situation so unfortunate, that it
can shut off one who has the thought of God, from God. If you but lift
up your head for a moment out of a stormy chaos of madness and cry to
him, God is there, God will not fail you. A convicted criminal, frankly
penitent, and neither obdurate nor abject, whatever the evil of his
yesterdays, may still die well and bravely on the gallows to the glory
of God. He may step straight from that death into the immortal being of
God.
This persuasion is the very essence of the religion of the true God.
There is no sin, no state that, being regretted and repented of, can
stand between God and man.