dying spirit! How shall I be delivered from the wrath to come? What shall I do to be saved? If my house were burnt down, I might get another; if my friends were cut off, I might procure new ones; if my health were destroyed, it might be restored: but if my soul be lost, it can never be recovered, and shall be utterly undone. Such are the views of a true penitent!

And let me ask, are your thoughts of God, of Christ, and of your own soul, very different from what they once were? Without such a change of mind, there cannot be genuine repentance. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away: behold all things are become new. 2 Cor. v. 17. I do not say that repentance is always produced by the same means, or in the same manner. In one instance, the mind is changed, as a river gradually drawn into a fresh channel; and in another, as a river turned into a new course, by the shock of an earthquake. Such was the difference between the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, and that of Lydia. 2. Repentance is contrition of heart.

The prophets of old called the Jews a stiffnecked, stout-hearted, and rebellious people. How many in the present day answer to this description! Though we warn them, admonish them, intreat them, and thunder aloud in their

ears the threatenings of the law; though we shew them the nearness of death, the certainty and solemnity of the last judgment, the transporting happiness of heaven, and the endless, unutterable misery of hell-they reaain unaffected and unconcerned! They sleep like Jonah! while the tempest, which their own sins have raised, threatens them with instant destruction. How awful is it to see this daring presumption-this unfeeling stupidity, continued to the last hour of life! "There are some persons," says Mr. Simpson, "so hardened in sin, and so totally given up of God, that neither sickness nor death can make any impression on them." He mentions one of this unhappy description in Essex, not far from the place where I now write; whom he both visited during his illness, and interred after he was dead. He was of a good family, and possessed good abilities; but wasted all his property and ruined his constitution, in a course of riot and excess. Among his bottle companions, he made a jest of hell, and turned every thing sacred into ridicule. In this way he lived, and died a martyr to spirituous liquors; cursing and blaspheming to the last, notwithstanding all that could be done to bring him to a better mind.* O the blinding and hardening nature of sin! * Simpson's Plea for Religion, p. 256.

What poison is so subtle, so dangerous, so deadly? How does it brutalize and ruin the soul! How does it warp the judgment, pervert the will, and stupify the heart!

If you work all uncleanness with greediness, you will in a short time be past feeling. Reproofs will have no edge to wound; warnings, no weight to move you. And is there any thing on earth more to be dreaded than such a state ? There is truth in the saying of a good author, "It is better to have a burdened conscience than a benumbed conscience: you had better be overfearful, than have no fear of God before your eyes." The words of the apostle to the Hebrews are never out of season: Exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Heb. iii. 13.

Now, true repentance is a state of mind, directly opposite to that which 1 have just described. It is in the scriptures called a broken heart, or a contrite spirit. Psalm li. 17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heurt, O God, thou wilt not despise. Men, as one observes, despise broken things; but God does not despise a broken heart; so far from it, that he accounts the sorrow of a penitent sinner more valuable than the most costly sacrifice.

When the word of God is applied by the power of divine grace, the flinty heart melts into tender 'grief, and the eyes overflow with floods of tears. What anxious thoughts! what strong and cutting convictions are now felt! When the fountains of the great deep are broken up within, what agonies wring the soul! O, says the sinner, I have rebelled against that God whom angels adore! I have broken his laws, defied his judgments, and despised his mercies. I have neglected the great salvation, and ungratefully slighted that compassionate and glorious Redeemer, who gave his life a ransom for me! I have turned a deaf ear to the joyful sound of the gospel, and done despite unto the Spirit of grace! Such thoughts as these are the arrows of the Almighty, which pierce the heart with the keenest anguish, and make those deep wounds, which nothing but the balm of Gilead can heal. What is pain of body, compared with distress of mind? The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can hear? Yet we may truly say, he who thus sincerely mourns over his sins, shall not eternally sink under them.

Behold David, that broken hearted penitent! How deeply he laments his sin. How fully and feelingly he confesses it. How humbly and earnestly he prays for pardoning and renewing grace.

snow.

Psalm li. 3, 4. For I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. He did not cast a hasty glance at sin, and soon forget it again. No, wherever he went, it seemed to haunt him as a frightful monster. It was not the injury done to men, so much as the offensiveness of his crimes to God, that filled him with bitterness. There are few, who do not sometimes feel a pang of remorse, but the contrition of David's heart is compared to the anguish of broken bones.

Behold the penitent publican, mentioned Luke xviii. 14. Pressed beneath the load of his guilt, he goes to the temple to pray. But he stood afar off, and would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast, crying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner! His distance, and humble posture, betoken the sense he felt of his own unworthiness, conscious that he might have been in justice, everlastingly banished from the holy temple, and all the means of grace. His smiting upon his heart, silently, but expressively said, here lies my guilt, my greatest burden; here are deep fixed the barbed and bitter arrows