this is the main, as it is the most important idea in the text. God has endowed us with a conscience; and it is a part of his arrangement that man shall be self-punished, and shall bear about with him the means of self-correction and rebuke. The severest of all the punishments, therefore, which visit the sinner, are those which spring up from the soul itself, and the torture which man is constrained to inflict on his own heart. It consists of sin brought to recollection, though long since forgotten; of the pangs of remorse; of the remembrance of injuries which we have done, over which years have rolled away, and on which many, many a sun has risen and set. I will not say that there is anything like caprice in the manner in which these sins are brought to the recollection; I will not say that it is by no regular law that it is done-for all the operations of the Spirit of God on man are in accordance with settled law; but there is much in the manner in which it is done that strongly resembles power exerted without rule, or acting by laws which we cannot trace. Now you remember some word spoken, or deed done, that injured one long since dead, and of which a voice from the tomb almost seems to remind you. Now sins that seemed to have faded from the memory, or whose lines were so obliterated that you could hardly trace them, revive, and all the faded colours are restored, and they stand out to view as if written in letters of "living light." Now one single sin seems to stand before the mind black as night. You see it everywhere. It meets you in every pathway, and in every place of solitude. You go to your counting-room, and it is there; you awake at night, and it is before you. The ghost of a murdered man is not apparently more omnipresent; nor the stain of blood on the hand more visible to a guilty eye, and you wonder what has given that prominence to that single sin just now. And now sins come in groups and clusters, and all the evils and errors and follies of your whole life stand out to view, and face you every step you take. Your spirit is wounded,—you have the feelings of a guilty man. It is not so much that you are in danger,-it is that you have done wrong-that your life has been a life of guilt. There is no effort then to cloak or conceal the offences of the past life. They are seen and confessed to be wrong. There is no attempt to ward off the appeals of truth,-to palliate the neglect of prayer or religion,-to excuse unbelief or impenitence, or to substitute the claims of external morality for what God requires. In the most absolute and unqualified sense the soul confesses its guilt, and feels that dust and ashes become one whose whole life has been wrong. This is that state of mind which is characterized in the Bible as "a broken and a contrite heart," or as a "bruised reed”—the state of mind which David experienced when there was brought to his remembrance his great acts of guilt, when he said, "A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise," Psa. li. 17. It is this sadness which is felt at the remembrance of guilt that the gospel is designed to heal, and this wound of the soul to a greater or less degree always precedes true conversion to God. (5.) There is a wound of the spirit which only the children of God feel; or such as is found among those who give to others, if not to themselves, every evidence that they are sincere Christians, and are heirs of eternal life. It may assume with them the form of recollected guilt; or the form which exists when they see no evidence that their sins are pardoned; or the form of the hiding of the Divine countenance; or the form arising from the feeling that they are forsaken both by God and mana form which exists when everything seems to be against us, and disappointment sits gloomily, like an ill-omened bird, on all that we undertake. This is often charged on religion itself when it should not be, for such cases often arise from the want of religion, and because the soul fears that it has no religion; and in the seasons of deepest sadness which such persons feel, as in the case of David Brainerd and Payson, religion, “instead of being the cause of gloom, is the only refuge from its overwhelming effects." This is often made an objection to religion by scoffers and revilers, and the sorrows of the soul in religion are made the subject of unseemly merriment; but with a heart of true sensibility, no matter what the source of sorrow, it will not be so-for, "With a soul that ever felt the sting "There are minds so delicately strung that they cannot escape the most distressing attacks of melancholy. Friendship, philosophy, and even religion, as it exists in imperfect man, cannot oppose a complete barrier to its influence." With those who feel it most, as in the case of Cowper, there are united often some of the most delicate and lovely traits of character; a warmhearted philanthropy; a humanity that would not needlessly 'set foot upon a worm;" a general cheerfulness of manners; an exquisite humour; a disposition to find pleasure anywhere and everywhere,—in a flower, with a pet rabbit, with children, in the quiet walks of nature, and above all, in sweet communion with God. But you cannot argue against nerves; you cannot 66 heal the maladies of the body by moral influences; you cannot guard the sufferer who has such a temperament from the sorrows which may thus find their way to the soul. "The best of men have occasionally groaned under this pressure. It made Job 'weary of his life;' and that pensive, tender-hearted prophet who seems to have been made to weep says, 'When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint within me.'" It is not fancy; it is not imagination; it is not that such persons ⚫ are worse than others; it is not that they have no true piety— no amiable traits-no cheerful hours: it is to be traced often, perhaps always, to something else than moral causes, and the blame of it should not be thrown upon religion, nor should they who are thus afflicted suppose that they have no true piety. ""Tis not as heads that never ache suppose, Forgery of fancy, and a dream of woes; Ten thousand thousand things at once go loose, No wounds like those a wounded spirit feels, No cure for such, till God, who makes them, heals." If there is a soul that should meet with sympathy on earth, it is such a soul; if there is one that does meet with sympathy in heaven in its sufferings, it may be presumed to be such an one. Yet there is often sorrow without sympathy; anguish of spirit which no one understands but he who feels it; a depth of distress for which no balm is found in human things; and an exquisiteness of mental woe which,—while it is looked upon with indifference by men, or excites their smile, or provokes their reproaches, as if the subject of this sorrow were cast off by God, or as if religion were to bear all the blame for what human nature ever suffers,—can be met only by the Great Healer of the spirit-by that Redeemer who sympathizes with all forms of grief. How little sympathy is often felt for it; how true to the life is the manner in which it is met; is described by one who experienced it as keenly as man ever did : "This, of all maladies that man infest, Claims most compassion, and receives the least; Blest-rather curst-with hearts that never feel, On pangs enforced with God's severest stroke."-Cowper. That all these sorrows of the spirit are to be traced, in one way or other, to sin, there can be no reason to doubt; for how can we conceive of suffering that is not somehow connected with this? But let not a man write "bitter things against himself" on account of these sorrows of the spirit; let him not say in his heart that "God has cast off for ever; that he has forgotten to be gracious; that he has in anger shut up his tender mercies; that he will be favourable no more." Let him not say that there is no "balm in Gilead, and no physician there." Let him not say that no good can ever come out of this to his own soul. What a bright day rises after the darkness of midnight; what a beauty there is in nature after a tempest; what a charming bow of the covenant there is bent on the departing cloud; what exquisite happiness there is after pain; what a sense of the value of redemption after the night of gloom passes away; what qualifications for usefulness are given to those who pass through fiery trials; what a bright home is that heaven where there shall be no tears; and what comfort can that God impart of whom it is said by Elihu in the book of Job, with so much beauty, "He giveth songs in the night!" Job xxxv. 10. III. The third general remark to which I proposed to direct your attention was, that it is difficult to bear the afflictions of a wounded spirit. The text is, “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity: but a wounded spirit who can bear?" The meaning of this is, that when the body is pained, the mind, if sound and pure and healthful, will enable us to sustain the sorrows of bodily sufferings as a faithful ally. It can uphold the sinking frame. It is a helper that may be relied on then. But if the mind itself be wounded, all support is gone. What will sustain that? The body cannot be depended on to come to the rescue, and the man sinks in despair. This is the point which is now to be illustrated. Of one fact here adverted to, that, if the mind be sound and the heart whole, bodily pains can be borne, the world has furnished abundant illustrations. We know that disease and pain can be endured without murmuring; and the history of the church has furnished not a few beautiful illustrations of the fact that the pains of the rack, the horrors of impalement, and the agony of flame at the stake, can be all endured with a calm and tranquil spirit. A good conscience; a belief that we are right; a conviction of duty; unwavering confidence in God the Saviour, and the aid of his Holy Spirit, enable the suffering martyr to endure all that the malice of men can inflict on the human frame. But when the mind is diseased—when the spirit is wounded, the case is changed. Then the prop is taken away, and the anguish of such a spirit who can bear? In illustrating this, I may observe, (1.) That this anguish of spirit often occurs when the body is feeble and prostrate. A disordered nervous temperament; or a tendency to depression and sadness; or a succession of external calamities, may prepare the way for the inexpressible tortures which the mind may be made to endure. Then a mental sorrow; an unkind remark of one who ought to be a friend; an unguarded and almost unmeaning word used by him who is really your friend; an instance of neglect or the want of due attention; the detraction of a slanderer; or ingratitude in a child or in one who should be your friend, comes with a force which would scarcely be felt if the body were sound, and the nervous system braced to bear the rebuffs of life. (2.) It is intolerable, because suffering from this quarter strikes at all a man's comforts and hopes. A man has a reputation. It has been to him the fruit of many a hard year's toil. It is worth more to him than all the wealth of Ophir, and there is not a monarch so rich that the brightest gem in his diadem could purchase it, or make him willing to part with it. It is all his capital, his hope, his stay, and the only inheritance that he is likely to leave to his family. The cold, unfeeling slanderer; the false friend; the rival; the man that you have befriended, and that you would befriend again, strikes the envenomed fang into that character, calumniates your name, prostrates your reputation as far as he can; and who can bear it? Far from me and my friends be a spirit that would not feel on such an occasion-a heart which would not bleed. (3.) Again, a spirit wounded by the remembrance of guilt, who can bear it? Many an illustration has the world furnished of this, and will still furnish. The remembrance of wrong done, of duty neglected, of privileges abused, of mercies disregarded; the remembrance of the days when the imagination gave loose to the reins of impure conceptions, or the tongue to words of blasphemy; the remembrance of the times when the mercy of God was disregarded, and the appeals of eternal love slighted, comes with withering power over the soul, and rests like a horrid incubus upon the crushed and tortured spirit; and who can |