stand clear in the judgment of his cause. He implores of God to create in him a clean heart and renew a right spirit within him, and adds, "Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee;" the law having provided no sacrifice of expiation for moral offences of this kind; its whole system of sacrificial propitiation having effect only as to lighter offences of a ceremonial or temporary kind, as the apostle to the Hebrews largely argues. The only sacrifice that we can bring to procure to ourselves the application of God's free pardon, is, under the Old Testament as well as under the New, a penitent heart. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." When with this sole means in his hands of approaching the offended Majesty of heaven, an altered heart, a spirit smitten and broken from the consciousness of transgression, the restitution of Sion to God's favour and protection is implored, as representing the restitution of its founder and king,-when God has been gracious to his inheritance, and built up her walls that were broken and decayed,-then, says David, "shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations; then shall they offer young bullocks upon thine altar."

These last expressions of the Psalm may well remind the Christian reader of the then future Son of David, who should bring peace and restoration to Jerusalem; whose sacrifice and oblation has made that reconciliation for the sins of the whole world,

which no rite of the old law could ever procure; whose one satisfactory oblation is ever commemorated, and its life-giving virtue exhibited, on the Christian altar; through which alone our imperfect penitence, and the sacrifice of our troubled and contrite spirit, could obtain, either before or since, acceptance at the throne of mercy. To this source of mercy, of old approached but implicitly, it is our great privilege, as Christians, regenerated and adopted sons of God, to have explicit recourse on the terms, and in the sacraments, of the gospel. And whoever, enlightened by the grace of the Son of David, peruses this psalm of his penitent ancestor, and perceives the intense sorrow of spirit which its terms import, will never by any possibility think his acceptance and pardon any argument for venturing on sins in any respect resembling his; even supposing, what we have certainly no right to suppose, that the violation of the grace of baptism, and despite shown to the fuller power and light of the gospel, are things in their nature as reparable as similar offences under the law. For though God does ever accept true repentance, and we have his most gracious assurance to that effect, it is still a most arduous and difficult thing to repent; far more difficult at any time of our lives than thousands who lightly use the term, as a part of religious speech, are disposed to conceive. Few, it is to be feared, are the cases, after the contented practice of deadly sin, in which such repentance has been attained, compared with those in which the vicious

practice has been abandoned, because interest or reputation forbid its continuance; and where, after the so-called reformation, the manner in which the sin is remembered, with a tenderness and complacent esteem of the former self, stands in direct contradiction to the penitence which this example of Holy Scripture exhibits, and which the church of God enjoins, as indispensable for absolution and remission. O then, as it is impossible to tell how any act of sin may taint and colour universally the whole future life, as this is most especially true of those sins which defile body and mind, which shut out the love of God, and extinguish the sense of all that is high and holy from the heart,-let no one venture on presumptuous transgressions, through the confidence with which Satan would inspire him that he may easily hereafter repent. The chances are fearfully against the possibility of such a recovery; but should it even by God's grace be effected, its pain as well as its difficulty is extreme. We may read it in the terms of this psalm, where it is compared to the setting of broken bones. And who then would not prefer the continued soundness of moral action which, by God's baptismal grace, may be his, to the anguish of a restitution like this? For be assured, that it is only in attention to God's laws, and a diligent care in all respects to comply with them, that we can ordinarily secure and maintain the habitual penitence ever required of us; that contrition of mind for past departures from grace, and present weaknesses and failures,

which makes our confession to be followed with the consolations of Christ, the assurances of his authoritatively communicated pardon, and the confirming grace of his Holy Spirit. The allowance of deadly sin consists not with any true habitual penitence and with regard to the sins that will ever cleave to us, the adequate repentance necessary to prevent their accumulation to greater guilt continues not without watchful obedience. "There is a sin unto death," says the beloved Apostle; "and there is a sin not unto death," which our continual prayers and devotion prevent from taking fatal effect. These things are said unto us, that we sin not; and it is only when we walk in the light, as God is in the light, forswearing and renouncing every work of darkness, that the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

SERMON X.

THE 'SAMARITANS AND THE JEWS.

(Preached at St Mary's, on the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 5, 1841.')

JOHN IV. 21-23.

Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, and now is, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

THE great purpose of our Saviour's advent upon earth, to die not for his own nation only, but to gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad, is developed but obscurely during the period of his mortal life. To the chosen disciples of our Lord themselves it is a sealed mystery; a secret not fully revealed to them till the great sacrifice for sin was offered up, and they were enabled, by the subsequent intimations of the Holy Spirit, to proclaim its benefit to all the world. Before this, the commission received by the same apostles was of a more restricted character: the lost sheep of the house of Israel are those whom they are expressly commanded

1 First preached in India, in 1826.