and see how David felt: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." Wonderful language! What views of sin were then in his mind; and oh what views of God! He had seduced Bathsheba into the greatest sin a wife can commit; he had murdered her husband; and had thus committed two of the most enormous evils against the well-being of society, and yet so impressed was he with a sense of his sin as committed against God, that he could now think only upon this. "Against thee, thou holy, holy, holy Lord God, have I sinned. Against thee, my Benefactor, who didst raise me from the sheepfold to be the governor of thy people. Oh, this is the crimson hue of my offence; this is the sting of my remorse; this is the wormwood and the gall of the cup of bitterness I now drink. Thou art willing to forgive me, and the thought of thy mercy blackens my crime, and deepens my self-abhorrence." This is godly sorrow; a grief for sin as sin, and as committed against so holy and gracious a God, and not merely a grief for the mischief we have done to ourselves. Godly sorrow grieves for those sins which God only knows; for those sins which it knows he will forgive, yea, which it is assured he has forgiven; and this is the test of genuine contrition-Do we mourn for sin as sin, or only for fear of punishment?

4. Repentance includes hatred of sin, forsaking it, and a determination not to repeat it. No man can truly repent of an act without a feeling of dislike to that act; these two cannot be separated, yea, they are the same thing. Reformation produced by penitence is repentance. A person that has been stung by a serpent, will not caress the reptile while he bathes the wounds he has inflicted with the tears of sorrow no, he will destroy the viper, or flee from

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him, and will ever after be inspired with fresh terror and dislike of the whole serpent race. The penitent regards sin as the viper that has stung him, and will ever after hate it, dread it, and watch against it. Practices that before were delighted in, will be abhorred and shunned; and instead of trying how near he may come to them without committing them, or how many things he may do that are like them, without doing the very things, he will try how far he can retire from them, and how entirely he may avoid the very appearance of evil. Will the serpent-bitten man try how near he can approach the rattle-snake without being stung again, or will he fondle reptiles as like the species as they can be, though they are without venom? No. Observe how repentance wrought in the members of the Corinthian church: "For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves; yea, what indignation; yea, what fear; yea, what vehement desire; yea, what zeal; yea, what revenge," 2 Cor. vii. 11.

Such is repentance.

But it is important to guard the inquirer against some perplexities with which many are very apt to trouble themselves on this subject.

You are not to suppose that you do not repent, because you have never been the subject of overwhelming terror and excessive grief. Persons in the first stages of religious impression are sometimes cast down and discouraged, because they do not feel those agonizing and terrifying convictions, that some, whom they have heard or read of, have experienced. Others, again, are greatly troubled because they do not and cannot shed tears and utter groans, under a sense of sin, as some do. If they could either be

wrought up to terror, or melted into weeping, they should then take some comfort, and have some hope, that their convictions were genuine. Now it is very probable that you, reader, have these fears, and are labouring under some mistakes as the ground of them.

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It may be, that this longing after great terror or deeper grief, may spring from a wrong motive. If you possessed these feelings, you would be comforted, and have hope, you think; yes, and thus by looking to your own feelings for comfort, make a saviour of your experience, instead of Christ, as I fear many do. "Oh!" say some, or if they do not say it, they feel it, now I have had such deep convictions, and such meltings of heart, I think I may hope." But is not this putting their feelings in the place of the work of Christ? If you could endure for a while the torments of hell in your conscience, and shed all the tears of all the penitents in the world, these would not save you; and to take comfort and hope from these things, will be resting on a sandy foundation. But, perhaps, you think this deep experience would be a stronger ground of confidence to go to Christ. Is not his own word, then, a sufficient warrant? Do you want any other warrant, or can you have any other? Is not his invitation and promise enough? What can your feelings add to this? In some cases, there is pride at the bottom of this longing after terror and distress: the person who covets it, wishes to be distinguished among christians for his deep experience and great attainments; or he may wish to have something of his own to dwell upon with pleasure, a something that shall imbolden him in his approach to God; it is, in fact, a subtle species of self-righteousness, a looking to inward feelings, if not to good works, as something to depend upon, and to glory in before God.

This anxiety may arise also from a partial and incorrect view of the nature of real religion. True religion is not a matter of mere feeling and strong emotion, but a matter of judgment, and conscience, and practical principle. minds of men are variously constituted as regards susceptibility of emotion. Some persons are possessed of far livelier feelings than others, and are far more easily moved; we see this in the common subjects of life as well as in religion. One man feels as truly the affection of love for his wife and children as another whose love is more vehement, though he may not fondle, caress, and talk of them so much : he may not even suffer those paroxysms of alarm when any thing ails them, nor of frantic grief when they are taken from him; but he loves them so as to prefer them to all others, to labour for them, to make sacrifices for their comfort, and really to grieve when they are removed. His love and grief are as sincere and practical, though they are not boisterous, passionate, and noisy: his principle of attachment is as strong, if his passion be not so ardent. Passion depends on constitutional temperament, but principle does not. Mere emotion, therefore, whether in religion or other matters, is no test of the genuineness of affection. Do not then, my reader, be troubled on this matter; your religion is not to be tried by the number of tears you shed, or the degree of terror you feel, or the measure of excitement to which you are wrought up; there may be much of all this where there is not true repentance, and there may be little of it where there is. Are you clearly instructed in the knowledge of God's holy nature and perfect law, so as distinctly to perceive, and really to feel, and frankly to confess, your numberless sins of conduct

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and deep depravity of heart? Do you truly admit your just desert of that curse which your sins have brought upon you? Do you cast away all excuses, and take the whole blame of your sins upon yourself? Do you really mourn for your sins, although you may shed few tears or utter few broken groans? Do sins to God without reserve, confess you your as well as without excuse? Do you truly hate sin, and abhor yourself on account of sin? Do you feel a repugnance to sin, a watchfulness against it, a dread of it in the least offences? Are you possessed of a new and growing tenderness of conscience with respect to sin? Then you are partakers of true repentance, although you may not be the subjects of those violent emotions, either of terror or of grief, which some have experienced.

I do not for a moment mean to throw suspicion over the experience of those who have been called to pass through a state of conviction, which, on account of its terrific alarms and unutterable anguish, may be called the valley of the shadow of death. By no means. God has led some of his people, not only hard by the clouds, and blackness, and thunders, and earthquakes, and trumpet, and awful words of Sinai, but almost by the very brink of the burning pit, within sight of its flames, and within sound of its wailings: but let no man covet such a road to glory; let no man think he has mistaken the road, because he has not witnessed these dreadful scenes in his way. All must pass by both mount Sinai and mount Calvary in the way to heaven, but the view is neither so clear nor so impressive, of either of them, to some as to others.