leave to your individual reflections, the further application of the general principles that have been laid down; and will proceed to consider,

III. THE EXTENT AND MAGNITUDE OF THAT CONVERSION TO GOD WHICH IS THEREFORE NECES

SARY.

For the separate examples of corrupt habits which have been adduced, are only so many particular specimens of the general state of man. Perverted habits universally prevail; and they have altered our depraved nature, but have altered it still for the worse. The facility which is acquired in any kind of action by the repetition of it, remains as the law of the human frame; but is become through our moral depravity the instrument of our ruin. Men indeed often complain of habit, as if it were something external, and which irresistibly enslaves them; but the complaint is unreasonable. The fault is in man himself, if a principle conferred on him for his good, becomes the occasion of his destruction. This is the case here. Men are almost infinitely different from each other in their particular pursuits, objects, tastes, sentiments, characters; but they all agree in this, that they are carried along by the current of evil habits. Some are profligate and some more decent; some are high in station, and some low; some are skilful and learned, and some ignorant; some are proud, and some covetous; some are mean, and some ambitious; some have a pretence of piety, and some are openly irreligious; but ALL by nature forget God, love the world, depend on their own understanding, follow the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and neglect the concerns of their salvation. All have the carnal mind, all the unenlightened and dark understanding, all the hard heart, all the death in tréspasses and sins. Much of this consists in what

we are now considering. Men acquire an aptness, a readiness, a pleasure in their sinful pursuits. Inveterate habits are thus insensibly formed. The reasons for the unlawful indulgence offer themselves to their thoughts on all occasions, and each time with increased force and persuasiveness. Thus God and Christ and spiritual religion are systematically, though sometimes imperceptibly, excluded, and men proceed in a worldly or a wicked state of the affections, pursuits and conduct; whilst every step makes their sinful career more natural, and lessens the counteracting influence of conscience and duty.

What then can turn and renew man, lying, as he does, in such a condition? His sins are not acts, but symptoms; not separate transgressions, but habits; not mistakes, but designs; not casual or incidental circumstances, but the constant and direct course of life. The very light which is in him is darkness. A state of sin and a state of holiness are not like two ways running parallel by each other, and just parted by a line, so that a man may step out of the one into the other; but like two diverging roads to totally opposite places, which recede from each other as they go on, and lead the respective travellers further and further apart every step. What then is to bring man back to God? What to break the force of custom? What to change all the intellectual habits and social usages of the sinner? What to set him at war with himself, to make him strive against the very bent and inclination of his soul, to induce him to lay violent hands, as it were, on his own tempers and course of conduct, and to fight with the man with whom he was in concord before? What is to stop him in his rushing down the precipice? What to awaken him in his profound lethargy? What to be the starting-post of a new race? What the principle

of a new life? What the motive, the master-motive, of a thorough and radical moral alteration?

There never was, there never can be, any other effectual method proposed for these high purposes, but that which the Scriptures reveal, AN ENTIRE CONVERSION OF THE WHOLE SOUL TO GOD BY THE MIGHTY OPERATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. We must be born again. If ever we are saved, it must be by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, not merely in the sense in which, in the judgment of charity, it may be contended that we have been regenerated in baptism, but in the full and plenary meaning of the expression, by an actual work of new-creating power upon our hearts, giving a right direction to the understanding, infixing a holy impression upon the affections, and communicating a right disposition and bias to the will, and thus actually working in us to will and to do of God's good pleasure.

This mighty revolution must take place in all without exception who are living a sinful and irreligious life, whatever difference there may be in such persons as to their external character in the world, and their freedom from gross and scandalous crimes. The commencement of this change is frequently imperceptible, and its progress commonly gradual; nor is it to be confounded with the wild and dangerous pretensions of mystics or enthusiasts. It is in every case to be judged of by the solid and real fruits of repentance, faith, and new obedience, which it produces. But it constitutes the real turning point in religion. Nothing can break up confirmed habits of sinful indulgence in a fallen creature like man, but a radical and powerful transformation of the heart. There may be some admission of truth in the judgment, there may be some convictions of an alarmed conscience, there may be some cursory thoughts on the theory

of religion, there may be some feeble attempts at amendment, where there is no real conversion. But all this is nothing. "The going over the theory of virtue," says Bishop Butler, "in one's thoughts, talking well, and drawing fine pictures of it; this is so far from necessarily or certainly conducing to form an habit of it in him who thus employs himself, that it may harden the mind in a contrary course, and render it gradually more insensible to all moral considerations."

God alone that created the heart can renew it after his image. When the soul receives this new and holy bias, then the evil habits in which men formerly lived, will resolutely be relinquished, and other and better habits will succeed. They will then repent of sin and separate from it. The easily besetting iniquity will be cast aside; the offending right hand cut off, the offending right eye plucked out. They will come out from the world and its practices. They will mourn from the bottom of their hearts over the courses of iniquity in which they before indulged themselves. They will watch and pray against temptation. They will believe in the inestimable promises of life in Jesus Christ, trusting alone in his merits, and renouncing their imagined righteousness which was of the law. They will depend exclusively on the graces and influences of the Holy Spirit for every good thought and every holy action. Thus they will stop at once in the course of their former habits, and begin to form new ones. They will now enter on a life of humility and fear, of conscientiousness and circumspection, of mortification and purity, of meekness and temperance, of justice and charity; all springing from faith in the atonement of Christ, and from a genuine love to his name.

Such are the extent and magnitude of true conversion. This is indeed fitly described, in the

emphatic language of Sacred Scripture, as a birth from above, a regeneration of the Holy Ghost, an awakening from sleep, a turning from darkness unto light, a new creation, a resurrection from the dead, a translation from the power of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son.

But, having now considered the general nature of habit, the consequences arising from our evil habits in particular, and the extent and greatness of that change of nature which is necessary to salvation, it remains to point out, more distinctly than has yet been done, the important practical lessons which the subject suggests. In this view, I would conclude the present discourse with a solemn address to those who are yet living in sinful or worldly habits, -who are yet in an unconverted state, and to all practical purposes, without God in the world. I am the more anxious to address such persons, because, from the lamentable depravity of our nature, the consideration of the force of habit, pregnant as it is with motives to an immediate and earnest repentance, is often employed by the impenitent as an excuse for their continuance in sin, and is thus made to justify that very course of transgression which it produces.

Allow me then, my brethren, affectionately to press on your attention the dangerous and seductive influence of your present habits. Wherever you may have arrived in the slippery road, O stop and consider your ways. God now in mercy bids you turn and live. His blessed Spirit with almighty grace is proposed to you in the Gospel. Weigh then your imminent though unsuspected state of danger. Be not deceived. It is of the nature of sinful habits to blind the mind. The very excuses you make to yourselves for not leading a religious life are proofs of your extreme peril.