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Yet, oh! forget not that if God remembers individual sins as making up the amount of national crimes, he also remembers them as personal offences against Himself, as matters between Himself and you, deserving to be visited by Him in righteous judgment. What if God were to open His lips at this moment, and, particularizing our personal sins of omission and of commission, to say over each of them, "I remember," and to deal with us concerning them as we have deserved? Where now would be our standing place? That He has not long ere this done so, and that He has not said to the messenger of His wrath, as He said to Saul by His prophet, "Now go and destroy," is only to be attributed to His forbearance and long-suffering. But His forbearance is not forgetfulness. It is "salvation" to those who use it as space for repentance, and who, mourning their sin, turn from their iniquity; but this very long-suffering will be an appalling aggravation to the sin and to the woe of those who use it only to persist in that which they know to be grievous to God's spirit, and opposed to His will. Would to God that we thought more frequently, more deeply, that God remembers, for then we should feel that persistence in known sin, however carefully concealed, however stealthily managed, however

preceded by the look-out, first this way and then that, as though there were not an eye above which sees all ways and at all times-then we should feel that persistence in sin is but treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath. With this sentence before us- "I remember "there comes a solemn appeal to those who are called to watch for souls, as they who must one day give account, “Cry aloud, spare not; show my people their transgressions and the house of Jacob their sins." But if they warn, it is to save. If, on the one hand, this book tells the impenitent sinner that God does remember sin, on the other it tells the penitent, the broken-hearted transgressor of a way of peace, a way of life already provided in which, approaching God, he may find promises such as these realized-" Their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more." "I will blot out as a cloud their transgressions, and as a thick cloud their sins." God has remembered sin ; and the stroke fell upon his well-beloved Son, our Surety, and now "there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus:" now for His sake God will not deal with us according to our sins, nor reward us according to our iniquities. Be this our plea, then; however accumulated our transgressions, however long the reserve of merited wrath, there is grace to help us, there

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is mercy equal to our utmost need, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though red like crimson, they shall be as wool." To this forgiving God let those turn who are conscious of never yet having sincerely sought pardon and reconciliation. Ah! would

you but do this, how blest the hour, how memorable the day, at once of your repentance and your peace! the day on which, for the first time, you could look up at God without dread, and feel that sin, your sin, had been "put away." Let that period be "now." Determine, in the strength of God, that it shall be so; and then go, and, in dependence on the same power, carry your solemn resolution into effect at the mercy-seat.

CHAPTER VIII.

TRUE AND FALSE REPENTANCE.

"Then Saul said, I have sinned: yet honour me now, I pray

thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord thy God"-1 Sam. xv. 30.

THERE is not a duty more incumbent upon those who would walk in the fear of God and have their hearts right with Him, than that of learning how to discriminate between that which is real in religion, and that which only bears the semblance of being right and consistent with the will of God. It is a woful act to "call evil good," to "put darkness for light, and bitter for sweet;" for to make a mistake here is eminently to sin against one's own soul. Yet the danger of confounding appearances with realities, of mistaking the one for the other, is by no means inconsiderable. Regard for self may be made to wear the appearance of zeal for God; pride may veil itself beneath a covering of apparent humility; and where, from certain circumstances, it might be imagined that

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there was real repentance, there may yet be concealed its very opposite. To know, then, how to distinguish-to be able to form a right judgment, so as neither to be misled ourselves, nor to allow others to mislead their own soulsis an acquisition of the highest moment, and it is one for which the sacred Scriptures furnish us with abundant materials. They set the real before us with its distinctive marks, and the unreal with its discoverable defects; and enabling us thus to make ourselves acquainted with both, they prepare us to apply these criteria to our own cases, and to form our conclusions accordingly, under the guidance of that gracious Spirit who, if implored, will never fail to assist the diligent student of God's word, in his effort to " compare spiritual things with spiritual.”

Now were it the question with us, How may we discriminate between a merely seeming repentance and genuine penitence? there is hardly a passage of Scripture which could render us more decided assistance than that portion of Saul's history which here claims attention. It brings before us most vividly a certain number of circumstances, the presence of which is at once decisive against the existence of genuine contrition. That we may ascertain what these are, that we may carry them in our recollection, so as to apply them, is undoubtedly the reason