his guilt and danger. They speak in the authoritative language of Nathan to David, "Thou art the man."

There are few, however hardened by sin, to whom the prospect of dissolution, and "revelation of the righteous judgment of God," is not accompanied with serious alarm; who do not cling to the hope that their eyes may not as yet be closed in death, while from pride, or some such motive, no confession of guilt is made. On the solemn stillness of the dying bed, when memory, long treacherous, recalls to mind crimes that have been forgotten, -when the tumult and din of busy life have ceased, and pleasure no longer fascinates, the heart is doubtless often the seat of the most fearful agony; the punishment, like that of the first murderer, is greater than can be borne; and the "broken spirit which drieth the bones," overwhelmed with the prospect of meeting an offended God, is driven to despair, and there is a full experience of the utter fallacy of the delusive notion, which leads myriads to tread the broad road; "We shall have peace, though we walk in the imagination of our hearts."

An innocent being has nothing to fear from God. The angels, pure and spotless, delight to dwell in the presence of Jehovah and to perform his pleasure. They have no dread of a Being

whom they have never offended, and their chief happiness must arise from the ceaseless vision of the Creator, whose praise is the subject of their songs of thanksgiving. And it can only be a consciousness of guilt, and of danger connected with guilt, which induces man to seek to prolong his stay upon earth; for were he not thus conscious, he would desire, like the apostle, to be "absent from the body," that he might be "present with the Lord;" and might exchange a world of vicissitude, and pain, and trial, for a world where there is no disappointment, and no sickness, and no change, and no death; where no storms gather, and no clouds darken, and no tempests roar; but where in the brightness of Jehovah's presence, "the general assembly and church of the first-born" bask in the sunshine of his unchanging favour, and drink of the rivers of inexhaustible pleasure which flow at his righthand for evermore.

II. We inquire, in the second place, into the means of our deliverance from the wretchedness which is the inevitable result of a consciousness of guilt; and we would affirm that such deliverance is not to be found, except by the man who has a clear view of the gospel of Christ as a revelation of pardoning mercy, and who perceives that pardon is there offered even to the chief of sinners.

An innocent being, we have said, can have nothing to fear from God. Felix would not have trembled at the reasoning of St. Paul, had he not trembled at the notion of a judgment to come. But of no child of Adam can it be affirmed, that he is innocent. In one individual only, who has been a sojourner in this fallen world, were there to be found no traces of inbred corruption, no evil passions to be rooted out, and no affections which required to be sanctified by the Spirit of grace; but that was the "holy child Jesus," who, though he took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man, and was exposed to suffering under its most agonizing forms; was yet wholly exempt from sin, and who by the spotless purity of his character was eminently fitted not only to set before us an example worthy of imitation, but to offer an all-sufficient sacrifice upon the cross,

as

"of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

The means of deliverance from a consciousness of sinfulness proposed to the man who has been a flagrant transgressor of God's law, and to the man who has been ostensibly a moral and decent character, are precisely the same; and hard as may be this saying to the natural pride of the human heart, it is founded on the decided testimony of the volume of inspiration-of that volume which denudes the very

holiest and most exemplary of every particle of merit, and which sets forth Jesus Christ and him crucified as the sure and only hope of the sinner, declaring most positively that "by the deeds of the law, no flesh living can be justified." The holiest and most exemplary have sins to be pardoned, and omissions of known and admitted duty to be overlooked. Their humble confession must be that of the psalmist: "Innumerable evils have compassed me about; mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up: they are more than the hairs of mine head, therefore my heart faileth me;" and consequently their rejoicing must be in the Lord Jesus Christ, whilst they have no confidence in the flesh.

St. Paul was fully alive to the melancholy fact, that he had not already attained, neither was he perfect," even when he possessed the testimony of a good conscience; a testimony that formed the subject of his rejoicing. He perceived that there was a law in his members warring against the law of his mind; and his exclamation, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” strikingly illustrates how strongly he felt, and how deeply he deplored, even in his converted state, the power of indwelling corruption; and this very consciousness of sin, even after he was

led to embrace the gospel, and to devote himself to the service of the Redeemer, induced him to cling more closely to the cross of that Redeemer, and to build his hopes of acceptance at the last, on that same foundation, on which he had adjured his various converts to build. The crown which he felt assured that the Lord, the righteous judge, would place upon his head, he viewed not as the meritorious recompence of a blameless life, but as the purchase of that Saviour, by whose precious blood he had been redeemed, to whose gospel he had been separated, and the least of whose apostles he regarded himself, because, led away by an infuriated zeal, he had breathed out threatenings and slaughters and made havoc of the church. The confidence which he felt, that he should at the last see his Maker's face with joy, rested solely on the consciousness which he possessed that he had found peace and acceptance through the blood of the His heart condemned him in many things, but it did not condemn him in this, that he had not embraced the free and full salvation of the gospel; he had the testimony of his conscience that he received Jesus as a Saviour, and he had therefore "peace and joy in believing." All his fruitfulness in good works, for in such works he was fruitful, even while there was a law in his members warring against the law of his

cross.

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