engaged all that time in endeavouring to promote your welfare, and now, when deserved ruin has followed your perfidious conduct, he has stood between you and destruction. Would you not be confounded by the contrast between your own selfishness and his disinterestedness; his love and your malignity? And would not this be accompanied with an utter detestation of your own conduct? It is sometimes said, that there is a principle within the human breast which indisposes us to love those whom we have wronged; and that, in proportion to the injuries we have inflicted, we kindle an animosity in our Own bosoms against their object. For the present admit this. Does not this hatred arise from a belief that a corresponding animosity exists in the bosom of the injured party? A belief that discredits or suspects all manifestations of good-will? And is it not connected with a dread of that humiliating feeling which arises in a proud mind on receiving favours from an enemy? But suppose the criminal, in this case, to be fully convinced that all the good which he had, emanated from pure disinterestedness; and that his benefactor was prepared and able to bury deep in oblivion all that was past (an effect not always easily conceived in human affairs), might we not look for something of a practical and affecting character in the result? Now, the sinner has

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been sustained by an almighty arm, through the course of his rebellion; and yet benevolence has followed him on. If he weigh the consequences of his past life with all this in view, he may be agitated in the survey; but the sight of God out of Christ will do more than reduce him to despair. Such is the reigning injustice of his heart, that the very mercies and long suffering of which he has been the subject, will increase his hatred of his Maker, because they aggravate his desert of condemnation. Change, then, the spectacle before him. Let the Saviour appear in his scriptural character; and you can easily conceive how the enlightening of his understanding gives a new aspect to his condition and to every thing around him.

In this view of the subject, there must be an apprehension and comprehension of the Redeemer, or of the divine mercy through him. It is to this end that Jesus Christ is represented as "set forth," or "exhibited, a propitiation, through faith in his blood." Faith, then, in the order of its agency, precedes repentance. The latter grace is certainly highly acceptable to God; "but without faith it is impossible to please him." Now the difference between a false and true faith has a most important reference to the object. The careless sinner will tell us that he believes in Jesus Christ; but he has no defined idea of the

object of true faith, because he has no feeling or personal interest in it: and, therefore, neither this grace, nor any of its effects, can be produced in his heart.

If, then, a right comprehension of Jesus Christ be the true source of repentance, you can judge of the species of sorrow which accompanies it. And, in the converse of this, you will see why legal conviction of sin will be of no avail of itself; since it is transitory in its nature; and since the mental sufferings which it produces so readily end in a deceptive calm, which may be mistaken for the new birth, although it may be the incipient chilling of the second death. It is not repentance, but mere remorse; the remorse of an unbelieving heart.

You will observe, too, that evangelical, or godly sorrow, cannot be a temporary effusion. Its source is far higher than that of any earthly grief. It may not exhibit the same intensity of emotion: but the most durable grief that ever occupies the bosom is, most usually, silent. Its progress, though noiseless, is like the current of deep waters; regular and irresistible. It is, like a living stream, active and effective; not stagnant and still, diffusing around the vapours of death.

Nor is true mourning for sin confined to the neighbourhood of its first appearance. The evangelical penitent exclaims with the psalmist,

"Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law."* The iniquities of others are distressing to a soul which has ever fairly and fully contemplated the cross of Jesus.

All this is the more obvious when you keep in mind that a counterfeit or spurious repentance arises from terror; a passion whose legitimate tendency is to banish love from the bosom, or rather to interdict its entrance there. Previously to the existence of this legal, or rather illegal, conviction, the sinner may have entertained an idea of God more pleasant than otherwise to his carnal mind. But it arose from that conception of the divine mercy, which rather encouraged than depressed his feelings of self-complacency. This being removed, and a more full notion of justice coming into sight, an external obedience commences from a principle of dread. It is the same restraint that is kept on the conduct of the wolf, by the nearness of the shepherd. It is the same obedience which a refractory slave may observe, under fear of his master's lash. Remove the apprehension of personal punishment, and the dominion of sin will be more powerful than ever. It will be found that the momentary check gives strength to desire, and passion unrestricted flows beyond its former bounds. Hence we often find the

*Ps. cxix. 136.

profligacy of those who have been once awakened, more inveterate and determined than before. The sorrow had been, rather that God hated sin so much, than that they had been guilty of it.

On the contrary, true repentance springs from love to God and a corresponding hatred of all that is unlike his holy character. To such a man it is not a subject of sorrow that the law is so holy, and its penalty so severe. He laments that his nature has been in opposition to the sacred requirements, and that his inherent carnality is so much at variance with his spiritual desires.

In the first case, aversion was created by the very effort to obey; and the distance between God and himself was accordingly widened. In the second, obedience is a means of keeping the affections nearer their object.

Spurious repentance produces an imperfect effect upon the life. This is obvious from its very nature. As it does not arise from a just discovery of the evil of sin, and is not connected with an abhorrence of it, whatever change may be produced is partial. It is true, that the subject may make certain sacrifices, in the omission of certain practices, or in the discharge of certain outward duties: but without jealousy of self, which arises from an insight into his own heart; without that law of love, which turns inclination to obedience, and cordially delights in the divine commands;