left us of entering into His rest, any of them should seem to come short of it1."

Such the new state of "righteousness and true holiness," in which Christians are created, and such is the state of those who draw back from it; and if any one asks whether St. Paul does not say that "by faith we stand ?"—I answer, as I have already answered, that doubtless faith does keep us in a state of grace, and is the means of blotting out for us those sins which we commit in it. But what are those sins which we do commit? Sins of infirmity;-all other sins faith itself excludes. If we do commit greater sins, we have not faith. Faith we cannot use to blot out the greater sins, for faith we have not at all, if we commit such. That faith which has not power over our hearts to keep us from transgressing, has not power with God to keep Him from punishing.

2

To conclude. This is our state :-Christ has healed each of us, and has said to us, "See thou sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee 2.” If we commit sin, we fall,-not at once back again into the unredeemed and lost world; no, but at least we fall out of the kingdom, though for a while we may linger on the skirts of the kingdom. We fall into what will in the event lead us back into the lost world, or rather into what is worse,

1 Heb. xii. 15; iv. 1.

2 John v. 14.

unless we turn heavenward, and extricate ourselves from our fearful state as speedily as we can. We come into what may be called the passage or vestibule of hell; a place full of those unclean spirits who seek rest and find none," and rejoice in getting possession of souls, from which they were once cast out. We are no longer in the light of God's countenance, and though (blessed be His Name), doubtless we can through His help get back into it; but we have to get back into it,—and then the whole subject becomes an anxious and serious one. Yes, it is indeed very serious, considering how the common run of Christians go on. If wilful sin throws us out of a state of grace, and if men do sin wilfully, and then forget that they have done so, and years pass away, and they merely smooth over what has happened by forgetting it, and assume that they are still in a state of grace, making no efforts by true repentance to be put into it again, only assuming that they are in it; and then go about their duties as Christians, just as if they were still God's children in the sense in which Baptism made them, and were not presumptuously intruding without leave, and not by the door, into a house whence they have been sent out, and if they so live and so die, what are we to say about them? Alas! what a dreadful thought it is, that there may be numbers outwardly in the Christian Church, nay, who at present are in a certain sense

(

religious men, who, nevertheless, have no principle of growth in them, because they have sinned, and never duly repented. They may be under a disability for past sins, which they have never been at the pains to remove, or to attempt to remove. Alas! to think that they do not know their state at all, and esteem themselves in the unreserved enjoyment of God's favour, when, after all, their religion is for the most part but the reflection of others upon their surface, not a light within them, or at least but the remains of grace once given. O dreadful thought, if we are in the number! O most dreadful thought, if an account lies against us in God's books, which we have never manfully encountered, never inquired into, never even prayed against, only and simply forgotten; which we leave to itself to be settled as it may; and if at any time some sudden memory of it comes across us, we think of it without fear, as if what had gone out of our minds had been forgotten of God also! Or even, as the way of some is, when they recollect any former sins of whatever kind, we palliate them, give them soft names, make excuses, saying they were done in youth under great temptation, or cannot be helped now, or have been forsaken. May God give us all grace ever to think of these things; to reflect on the brightness of that state in which God once placed us, its purity, its sweetness, its radiance, its beauty, its majesty, its glory; and to think, in con

trast, of the wretchedness and filthiness of that load of sin, with which our own wilfulness has burdened us; and to pray Him to show us how to unburden ourselves, how to secure to ourselves again those

gifts which, for what we know, we have forfeited.

SERMON XIV.

TRANSGRESSIONS AND INFIRMITIES.

HEB. X. 38.

"Now the just shall live by faith; but if any man draw back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him."

WARNINGS such as this would not be contained in Scripture, were there no danger of our drawing back, and thereby losing that "life" in God's presence which faith secures to us. The blessedness of a creature is to "live before God'," to have an "access" into the court of the King of kings, that state of grace and glory which Christ has purchased for us. Faith is the tenure upon which this divine life is continued to us: by faith the Christian lives, but if he draws back he dies; his faith profits him nothing; or, rather, his drawing back to sin is a reversing of his faith; after which, God has no

1 Gen. xvii. 18.

2 Rom. v. 2.