remember the bitterness of death,-listen to the warning voice, begin, continue, repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. SERMON II. MATTHEW III. VERSE I. In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, repent ye, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. IN In my last discourse upon this subject I endeavoured to shew, that a spirit of justice and sincerity, proved by abstinence from the sin, were necessary to repentance; and that repentance, to be efficacious to salvation, should be begun at an early period. After this endeavour to shew what is meant by a christian repentance, I shall proceed to state those causes from which repentance commonly originates, and those means by which it may be fertilized into Christian righteousness. The use of this will be, that, by impressing on our minds those circumstances from which amendment usually proceeds, we shall labor to produce them, if they are events within our own. power, and cherish them as the choicest gifts of God, if they are not. SI Repentance in after-life, most commonly, will be found to proceed from a good, moral, and religious education, in youth. When once the rules of the gospel are inculcated in childhood, and its beautiful morality firmly fixed in the mind, we are not to consider them as lost, because they are not always practised in the season of levity and passion ;---they are best seen in their revival, after a long suspense, when they scare the voluptuary from his revels, when they make the thoughtless think, and the bold tremble, and the godless pray; when the seed, which seemed dead, shoots forth into an harvest; when the dry wood ། |