Sunshine through the clouds

A fictional preacher on why we should preach the law:

This despair over sin is after all a part of the Spirit's enlightenment. Actually one sees more clearly all the while, though one is looking down at the dark pools of evil in the slough of sinful corruption. But it is important to look deeply into it, for one will otherwise imagine that it is possible to get across it by oneself. So one makes a few hops from hummock to hummock, but is soon mired. At the very worst, one does not even dare to admit that one is stuck fast, but claims that one is already across, only because one is no longer in the company of the self-secure sinners on the farther shore.

(p.121, Bo Giertz, The Hammer of God)

... and on why we shouldn't stop there:

We have thundered like the storm, we have bombarded with the heaviest mortars of God's law in an attempt to break down the walls of sin. And that was surely right. I still load my gun with the best powder when I aim at unrepentance. But we had almost forgotten to let the sunshine of the gospel shine through the clouds. Our method has been to destroy all carnal security by our volleys, but we have left it to the souls to build something new with their own resolutions and their own honest attempts at amending their lives. In that way Henrik, it is never finished. We have not become finished ourselves. Now I have instead begun to preach about that which is finished, about that which was built on Calvary and which is a safe fortress to come to when the thunder rolls over our sinful heads.

(p.122-123, ibid)