sermons, the effects of religious education, excitement produced by seeing others awakened in a revival of religion, and the real, and for a time the powerful strivings of the Spirit of grace, make those whose case we now contemplate, deeply feel their guilt and their danger. Outward reformation takes place, real and anxious concern for the salvation of the soul is experienced, the means of grace are sought and carefully used, even secret sins are partially forsaken and watched against; and yet repentance unto life never takes place. Very many of those who are thus exercised, like those who, in our Saviour's parable of the sower, received the seed in stony ground, or among thorns, fall away in a time of temptation, or else the wealth, and cares, and pursuits of the world, choke, and ultimately extinguish, all their religious sensibility, and leave them as careless of their eternal interests, perhaps more so, than they were before they were alarmed. In other instances, this kind of repentance is taken for conversion; is put for justification, in place of the righteousness of Christ; and religion is professed and its forms are observed, while the power of godliness is never known; and these unhappy subjects of delusion perish at last, with a lie in their right hand. Hear the solemn warning of the Saviour himself:-"Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: then shall ye begin to say, we have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart

from me, all ye workers of iniquity."

The whole of the legal repentance of which I have just been speaking, is made up of fear, self-righteousness, and unbelief. The law of God, though greatly feared, is never loved, but really hated; his own exercises, acts, and doings, form the ground of the legalist's expectation of propitiating, and rendering himself acceptable to his Maker; while unbelief discredits the declaration that the blood of Christ "cleanseth from all sin," and hence prefers the filthy rags of self righteousness, to the perfect and spotless robe of the Redeemer's righteousness, in which, and in which alone, a sinner can stand before God with acceptance, and receive pardon, justification, sanctification, and eternal life—all as the fruit of the Saviour's purchase, and to the sinner, a gift perfectly free, and utterly undeserved. -The difference between a legal and an evangelical repentance, will receive further illustration in the sequel.

The words "repentance unto life is a saving grace," farther imply, both that there is a repentance which is infallibly connected with eternal life, and that such repentance is a grace; that is, an unspeakable and unmerited favour; consisting of a right state or disposition of soul, produced, as all other gracious dispositions and exercises are, by the operations of the Holy Spirit. It is by faith, my young friends, that the redeemed of the Lord become entitled to heaven, and by repentance that they become prepared or qualified for its employments and enjoyment. The original word [Metavola, metanoia] used throughout the New Testament to denote genuine and saving repentance, strictly means a change of mind, and a change that is at once salutary, radical, and permanent. You perceive, therefore, that repentance thus taken, is

but another word for true conversion, and such is indeed the fact; both these terms refer to a right, deep, and lasting change of the mind, by which the soul is turned from the supreme love of sin, to the supreme love of holiness; that is, its whole current is reversed; so that after the change, it hates what once it loved, and loves what once it hated; and hence the life, as well as the heart, is changed, and instead of being devoted supremely to the pursuit of sinful or worldly objects, is devoted to the service of God, and is regulated by a regard to all his commandments. Thus they who are the subjects of true repentance or conversion, will be constantly increasing in sanctification; for repentance, it must be remembered, is an exercise often repeated, and never terminated while any sin or corruption remains to be mortified; or in other words, till the saint drops his body of sin and death in the grave. You perceive, therefore, that sanctification is the end, of which repentance is the means; and that the means cease only when the end is fully attained-when the soul, escaping from all its pollutions in the body, rises pure and immaculate to the mansions of perfect holiness in heaven-What a consistent and glorious system is the plan of our redemption! Faith, by connecting the soul with the Redeemer, entitles it to heaven, and repentance, by carrying on the work of sanctification, prepares it for the celestial beatitude; and these graces, although their operations are different, are always found conjoined; and the result is, that no individual is entitled to heaven, without being prepared for it; and no one is prepared for it, without being entitled to its possession-the title and the preparation invariably go together.

The next thing which the an

swer before us calls us to consider is, that in order to a genuine and saving repentance, the sinner must have a true sense of his sin. The methods in which wandering sinners are brought home to God are so various, that perhaps no one step of the process is always the same, or at least not perceptibly so, in the order of place and time. Yet, in most cases, that very legal repentance of which you have been hearing in this lecture, is probably the first exercise of an awakened sinner; and hence it has been technically called a law-work. But as it goes no further than to make the transgressor see the danger of sin, and to put him on using improper endeavours to avoid that danger, it can never be said to proceed from such a sense of sin, as the answer before us specifies. In a true sense of sin, its awful danger is indeed seen, and as I have just said, is probably, in most cases, the first thing that is perceived; but to this there is always added the following particulars:-1. Sin is seen to be a most unreasonable, wicked, and daring rebellion against a good and holy God. In a mere legal repentance God is feared, and the sentence of his law is dreaded; but he is feared as a tyrant, and his law is disliked as unduly rigorous-If the sinner could have his wish, it would be that the law of Ged should be relaxed, so that he might sin with impunity; and could this be the case, his fears and his concern about his sin would vanish together. But he who has a true sense of sin, sees and says with the apostle, that the "law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good." He sees that God has required nothing but what is perfectly reasonable, right, and good; and that in all his sins he has been a wicked and daring rebel, trampling on the righteous authority and requisitions of the greatest

and best of beings, to whose wonderful and unspeakable forbearance alone he is indebted, that he has not been consigned to the just punishment of his transgressions, in the pit of, eternal perdition. He sees the aggravation of all sin to consist so much in its being committed against God, that he is ready to leave out of view all other considerations, and to say with the penitent Psalmist, whose great sin had a fellow mortal for its immediate object-"Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgAnd hence it is, as this text fully warrants us to affirm, that a real penitent, one who has a true sense of his sin, will, from his heart, justify the sentence of the law which condemns him-will see and feel that he deserves to die the death; and that if he were cast into hell, he would have no right to complain that he was punished beyond his desert. This, as will presently appear, is perfectly consistent with hoping for, and trusting in the mercy of God, through Jesus Christ, and is indeed inseparable from it.

2. There is, in a true sense of sin, a very affecting view of it, as in its own nature unspeakably polluting and vile. Agreeably to this, we find that the words of the Psalmist already quoted, are immediately followed by these-" Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." And a little after, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." With the Psalmist, every true penitent will trace up all particular acts of sinevery polluted stream that has defiled him in body and in soul, to the fountain of abomination that there is in his very heart and nature. Think much of this, my beloved youth. That sinner has ne

ver yet had a true view of his case, who dwells only, or principally, on particular instances of transgression. He must be brought to see, what our Saviour so plainly and impressively taught, that "Those things which proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man." Yes, and the true penitent will have such a sense of his moral defilement by sin, that he will, so to speak, sicken at the view. He will see sin to be unspeakably filthy, odious, and detestable, and that it has polluted by its abominations all his nature, every power of his soul, and every action of his life; and he will, from a real sight and sense of his condition and character, say with holy Job"Behold I am vile, what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth-I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." To be purged and cleansed from this state of deep and hateful defilement, will be, as we have seen that it was with David, the most earnest desire of his soul. No evil will appear so great as the evil of sin, and no deliverance so desirable as to be freed from its filthy stains. Mark how strikingly, in this particular, a true sense of sin differs from that which only produces fear that punishment will follow it.

Our catechism next teaches us, that true repentance is also connected with, and proceeds from, "an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ." Much has been said on the question-Which is first in the order of nature, faith or repentance? You will observe that the question is entirely about the order of nature; for it is agreed on all hands, that these graces are inseparable, and always mingled together. Now it appears to me,

that whether faith be taken in its larger sense, as relating to the whole revealed will of God, or be taken in its more restricted sense, as an acceptance and reliance on Christ alone for salvation, it must, in the order of nature, go before every kind and degree of repentance. Legal repentance could have no existence, if the sinner did not believe in a God, who will punish the violators of his law-Suppose a sincere and complete Atheist, and you suppose the existence of a man who can never feel a single compunction for sin. He may fear punishment from men, but certainly can fear none from a being who, as he believes, does not exist. All sense of guilt before God must plainly proceed from some kind of belief of his existence, of his law, and of his determination to punish those who offend him. Those who are merely legalists in their repentance, have commonly a speculative belief, not only of the being of God, but of the general truth of the Bible; and hence proceed all their anxieties, fears, remorse, and self-righteousness-Such faith as they have, proceeds, and is the cause of such repentance as they exercise. And as to "an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ," by which it was doubtless intended we should understand at least the incipient exercise of saving faith, it appears to me that in the order of nature it must necessarily precede repentance unto life. We have no reason to believe that there ever was, or can be, any such thing as a salatary repentance, without some kind of apprehension that God may show mercy to the penitent individual. We thus conclude from what is witnessed in cases of a complete despair of mercy. Such a case was that of Judas. He had a powerful and overwhelming sense of guilt, and an utter despair of obtaining forgiveness. The con

sequence was, "he repented, and went and hanged himself: and such has been the effect of despair in numerous instances since the time of Judas; and it may be questioned whether this, or taking refuge in blank Atheism, would not always be the case, if there was not a lingering hope of mercy in the minds of those who have, to their own apprehension, been in a state of despair-At the bottom of their hearts there has still been a hope of mercy, too feeble to be distinctly recognised, yet not without a real operation and influence. But when there is a distinct apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, it furnishes the only pure, as well as the most powerful motive to genuine repentance. While the soul is filled with self-abhorrence, in the view of having sinned against a merciful God and Saviour, it is melted into genuine sorrow for all its sin, made to look on it with the greatest detestation, and at the same time is filled with humble love and adoring gratitude to God, and with a most intense desire to avoid offending him in time to come. Here indeed is evangelical repentancehatred to sin, because it is offensive and dishonourable to God our Saviour, and because it is in itself most loathsome and detestable. So that it may be truly said, that when faith and hope rise to assu

*It ought to be made known to those who cannot read the New Testament in the

original, that the Greek word which is here translated "he repented," is entirely different from that which is invariably used to signify true repentance-To repent truly, or savingly, is always expressed by derivatives from the word rv, (metanoeo). The word used to signify such a repentance as was that of Judas, is derived from μεταμέλομαί, (metamelomai). We lack single terms in the English language to denote the difference between the meaning of these two words in the original, and therefore both are translated by the same

word. Campbell translates the latter repentance, and the former reformation.

(Continued from p. 11.)

Let us continue to reflect a few moments upon this subject, which is of great importance, varying a little the light in which it is viewed. Let us consider what is meant by a supreme and superlative love to God. These words must have a meaning. It is not a supreme love of a certain nature, or person, called God, whom no man hath seen, and of whom we know no more but the name. In this case the old maxim would hold, "Ignoti nulla cupido;" there can be no affection, of either love or hatred, towards an object wholly unknown. A supreme love of God therefore, where it really hath place in any heart, must mean the love of a character in some measure understood, though not fully comprehended. In short, according to the Scriptures, it is a supreme love of the source and pattern of moral excellence, of a being of infinite holiness and purity, with whom "evil cannot dwell." Is not this, in truth and reality, the love of holiness itself, the supreme love of it? Can we love holiness then, and not aspire after it? can we love it and not endeavour to practise it? nay, can we love it, and not possess it? can we love holiness supremely, and live in sin habitually? it is the grossest contradiction, the most

absolute impossibility. There is then a diametrical opposition between the love of God and the service of sin. To suppose them consistent, would be supposing, that the tendency of the heart and affections might be opposite to the course of the life, or supremely fixed upon two things mutually destructive to each other; on the contrary, our Saviour justly affirms, that " no man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."*

Once more, Is not the love of God, I mean, the supreme love of God, precisely what is meant by holiness? It is not only an evidence of it, not only a source of it, not only an important branch, but the sum and perfection of it. For what is sin in the heart, of which all evil actions are but the fruits and expressions, and from which they derive their malignity and contrariety to the divine will? Is it not the love and pursuit of inferior objects on their own account, and giving them that place in our affections which is due only to God? All sins, of whatever kind, may be easily reduced to this, and shown to be nothing else, but the alienation and estrangement of our heart and affections from God, to whom alone they are due: which so far as it prevails, necessarily occasions a misapplication of every faculty of our minds, and of every member of our bodies, and thus a rebellion of the whole man. But whoever loves God above all, and places his chief happiness and delight in him, is truly holy; not only will be so as the effect, but really is so, by the possession of this disposition. In proportion as this love is increased and strengthened, his sanctification is carried on; and when it is complete and triumphant, entirely free

*Matt. vi. 24.