earned for ourselves a place in heaven as high as that of Noah, Daniel, and Job; when, if the expression is not presumptuous, we might have purified ourselves even as Christ is pure. Our Lord Jesus Christ was once a child, He was brought up subject to His parents, He was tempted in all things like unto us, and by the time He was thirty years of age, He was, in His human nature, what the Gospel presents Him to us in His Divine, the glory of the Only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." This was the effect of thirty years self-discipline, begun from childhood. We were children once, and pure once, and what have we become? the thought is almost too painful to think upon: yet it may be sufficient to remind us, what is the justice of the excuse we so commonly make for present self-indulgence. The difference between ourselves, such as we know ourselves, and the Saints, of whom we read in Scripture, is almost wholly attributable to the careless use we have made of our past opportunities; and surely no one in his senses will think this an excuse for future negligence. We are indeed most of us sadly unlike those Holy Men who are proposed to our imitation, and our strength is but little able to sustain what they sustained; but this is a poor reason for not attempting to sustain it.

Next, then, we have to consider, what is the wise course for those who have already lost so much time as we have, and lowered ourselves so sadly in the scale of God's creatures as we have done. And

the answer is a simple one.

Instances are given us in Scripture, as well of those who have begun the good course late, as who have begun it early; and the gate of heaven is not yet closed even against us. We may yet strive to enter in at the strait gate, though at a time of life when some have advanced far in their journey; we may begin even from this day proposing to ourselves the strict standard of duty which we have hitherto evaded; we may endeavour at least to amend our conduct, if it is too late thoroughly to amend our hearts; and we have God's assurance, that if we do this, He will accept our sincere though late attempts to serve Him, in the place of that purity and simplicity of heart with which His own have followed Him from the beginning.

If we are careful to make this practical use of Commemorations like the present, resolving to imitate, instead of being content with barren admiration, they may be among the most useful as well as delightful Services with which we can honour God: and that of this day more particularly, as it becomes habitual to us, and associates itself with our daily thoughts and actions, will in a manner realize to us even here that fellowship with the Saints which we are taught to expect in heaven, and will tend to bind Christians together upon earth in amity and concord, as members of Christ's universal family: that as there is but one body and one Spirit and one hope of our calling; one Lord, one faith, one

baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may henceforth be all of us of one heart and one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

SERMON XII.

REPENTANCE NOT EQUIVALENT IN THIS LIFE
TO INNOCENCE.

JEREMIAH Xiii. 23.

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." THE doctrine that no wickednesses which we have committed during our past lives, great and grievous as they may have been, have as yet rendered our condition hopeless, but that if we will now repent, and from this day forward attempt to live as God commands us, we shall save our souls alive, is of all the doctrines of revelation the most consolatory. It is a doctrine which must come home to the feelings of the good no less than of the bad. For the better men become, the more conscious they are of their unfitness to appear before God; and the more intolerable would be the burden of their consciences if they did not know His merciful promises of forgiveness. It is, however, like all other doctrines, liable to be misunderstood; and the mistaken notions which do as a matter of fact prevail respecting it, have led to great practical errors.

On the one hand, it furnishes a false consolation and encouragement, to persons who are quite aware that they are at this moment living in habits which are displeasing to God, and who have little doubt that if death came upon them in their present state of mind, they should not be reckoned among the faithful servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching. The notion that time enough yet remains for them to repent in, and that they shall be able by and by to attain, by repentance, that place in God's favour, which they are at present willing to forego for the sake of earthly indulgence, buoys them up in the midst of sin, and enables them to look the truths of religion in the face without fear for their own condition. Nor is this kind of self-delusion confined to a small class of men; it extends its influence much farther than we might expect, both among the bad and comparatively good. For few are so bad as to be lost to a sense of the fears which it lulls, or so good as to require no aid in lulling them. There are few even among those who, as it were, defy God to the face by deliberate sin, that are utterly insensible to the terror of meeting Him on the day of judgment; even whoremongers and adulterers are, in many cases, unable to disbelieve the terrible sentence which the Bible pronounces against them, and in the midst of their wickedness indulge the hope that they shall in the end repent and be saved. And, on the other hand, among those who in many